Canidae, Canidae
by InuYaoi
Summary: When Sesshomaru is cursed by a demoness, he struggles to accept that he is now bound to a Miko whose many skills include humbling the haughty. Forced into obedience, he hasn't any illusions that his devotion to her is anything but loyalty perverted… until he does.
1. Chapter 1

Can I offer you a flashlight in these dark times? This story is dark, grim and caters to certain kinks. There's no romance in this, and no chance of it. Also, it's told _entirely_ by Sesshomaru.

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**Canidae** [ kăn′ĭ-dē′ ] n.

A family of carnivorous mammals that includes dogs, wolves, jackals, and... foxes.

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**Chapter One**

I knew the folklore. Catching a nine-tail meant she belonged to the one who caught her. The fox cheated me. I had done no wrong, broken no demon law. I _caught_ her, which was not a simple thing to do. She was mine. That's why I hunted her.

I walked on velvet feet, a gliding shadow moving under the dark trees. There were no stars, and no moon. Just blackness. The kind of black prey would sit still in for fear of predatory eyes. In such dark my quick eyes saw everything.

Excitement mounting. In my mind was some queer mantra. Her scent led me. She beckoned for some demon to approach, to come to her in the humid heat and in hers. _Wait for me, Tamamae. Stay right there, and I will come to you._ This was my mantra, which I recited like a rosary, a prayer to keep her there before her inevitable disappearance, which would have me hunting her through every territory in Japan.

A favorite trick of mine was to hide my demonic aura while moving downwind. While hunting, I chanced upon a _thirsting_ kitsune. Like me, he had also caught Tamamae's scent, but unlike me he did not hunt in stealth.

He died without knowing me.

And as the fox lay on the dirt, his throat torn open, a tremor came over me. He had been careless and simple to catch. This was not normal. He should have been more clever. Six tails meant he had lived for six hundred years. Then I began to wonder: was it Tamamae that made him forget his cunning? If so I would not forget mine. I would never forget myself. No matter how compelling her illusion.

My concern waned as I rubbed his red pelt against mine. It wasn't enough to repress my aura. With a fox's scent Tamamae might continue to advertise hers.

When I found her, I was delighted to learn that foxes too could be victims of deception. Tamamae, however, was not thrilled to see me. She froze with instant alarm, and it seemed an arresting moment as we stared hot and leering at each other.

What an unearthly scene we were; two silver youkai seeming like spirits in the surrounding forest. No light except soft flickerings of fox-fire; blue will-o'-wisps that drifted and distorted our shadows against the trees.

Gods, that a demoness could look like that. Tall, slender, white hair, white robes covering her to the ground—she was a fox touched with feline beauty. Of them all the loveliest fox was Tamamae. I forced myself to look up from her middle, her small waist cinched by silver fur, to a viper's glare. "Ah, Tamamae," I said, "the sight of you is good for my eyes."

"Respect yourself more," she spat. "Demons who hide their scents behind the dead, even to deceive a fox, are indeed very low." And she looked at me with such _loathing _that I almost considered she was right to have said this. Almost.

I had a way of smiling that didn't quite reveal my teeth. "Cunning is not always conscious."

"Go weep you cur." Her contempt had a distinct smell mixed in with her bodily heat. I loved it. "You bother me terribly, and I will not spend my nights under a murderer."

Had fucking her been my intention these words would have bothered me. And her hatred was one-sided. I rather liked foxes, the females anyway. "You are under the wrong impression," I said, "I did not come here to break you off."

She murmured something soft and dangerous, insulting. Intuitive vixen. She must have known that humiliating her _would_ be my thing, for cheating me, for calling this one a "cur," and for the blue eyes that slid left from me now in disgust.

And now there was confusion in my feelings. That her apathy for me was not due to blindness or ignorance was what irritated me. I became more aware of my vanity glimpsing her pretty face. A great demon's pride was the reason to prove her wrong, to tell her how well-received among demoness I was. To her face caving into hatred, I could have told her of the many sensu fans* that had snapped by my merely walking through estates, and more the breathy sighs.

Pride was also the reason not to tell her this.

Instead, I pitied her. She told me to weep, yet I wept for her. Pity that she would never know this one, a true canine, carnally. Male kitsunes have a cunning delicacy about them, and are hardly _canines_ because of that.

"What do you want then?" Tamamae demanded of me. "For what reason would you have me believe you were a potential suitor?"

"To kill you," was my simple reply.

"Kill me you say! _You_," she snarled. "You with your one arm?" It was not the wind that raised her hair from her neck. This power was not seen but felt and heard crackling around her.

"If you do not give me such a wish as I demand." Her face darkened. She resented me for what I was—the dog who caught the fox. And so it was that the spiteful bitch would refuse to grant my wish even though, according to the folklore, it was my right. "Very well then." Now I moved nearer with my one arm. "Do not ask me for mercy—I have none."

But when my claws came down emptily I realized Tamamae did not make quick movements as _I_ did. She did not use demonic energy to thrust suddenly into spaces so that it seemed instantaneous.

Neither here or there, she had vanished along with her ghostly wisps. And, as I were, standing stupidly in the black pitch, I waited for something to happen.

"This wish," came her voice, and I whirled to see her materializing from a safe distance. "Is there no getting away from you until you get it?"

No words came from me, only my whip. I missed. And before I could send the glowing thread again she made an airy gesture with her hand that halted me.

I could move yet couldn't move. I didn't _want_ to move.

In her slow approach I sensed danger. Tamamae appeared even _more_ beautiful. "_Sesshomaru,_" I thought I heard. It had been a voluptuous voice, and the feline glint in her eyes touched me like it was one of her carefully lacquered nails. She stood before me now, and my lids came down slowly, my face relaxing dreamily.

Then suddenly, to a brilliant flash against my eyelids, a gathering of colors, there wasn't room in my mind for my own thoughts. Tamamae had cast an enchantment on me, and her power was more than sufficient to do it. It had even drowned out my most prominent sense. I could not smell the dampness of the forest. I was nearer to the moon than to the moss beneath my feet.

My breath caught when the illusions came.

I saw her flesh naked in a torch-lit chamber I'd never been, and felt her long legs, warm, firm, and sylphlike around my waist. I was leaning into her neck, tasting her scent, and her hair was in my mouth. I heard the pounding rhythm of our bodies, her laughing at my muffled cursings, and I trembled in that heart-tightening stop in time without stopping in movement. I felt our bodies pressed together, tied and knotted, and heard my moaning mouth chanting: _be still, be still_, begging her to be still lest she drag me with her before the pop.

—not my fantasies, these visions. I swear they were not. They were hers, and she sent them to me. The suggestion offended. A laugh is not what a demon wants to hear when he's climbing over a demoness.

Worse now, Tamamae was doing the thing that only foxes could make happen. She made a claw of her sorcery and gouged at hurts buried so deeply within that I learned the severity of my sufferings.

Gripping my face in this mental torment. I could hardly grasp the cringing horror of it. Insecurities laid bare, my bitterest regrets, father's death; anguish, longing, lust, wrath—sentiments meant to be felt separately, perhaps in pairs but never all at once.

Struggling to force her out my innermost. Blinded by smut with no appeal. Magical threads pulling in every vein, weaving into the fibers of my psyche. She was searching for something. Slithering in every thought, turning over every emotion—she wouldn't find it. I didn't know fear. I had none.

Ah, but Tamamae peered deeper than she ought have. She plumbed the depths of my depravity, and I suppose what she discovered was the reason for what happened then. Truly, I wanted her, and I wanted to kill her. If she lived I wanted to fuck her privately, if she died I wanted to fuck her publicly.

—wanting to do many things when I felt the slash of her claws. Senses returning, I had started to groan, and she cut me and cut me. The only thing that kept me from groaning again was that my teeth had clenched around it.

Weak and gasping, with a shudder I started to talk. "Damn you, bitch."

I reached for her, grabbed something as she dragged _me_ with her to the ground. I held her easily enough—though controlling the situation would've been easier had I my other arm.

Never had prettier claws butchered me or slashed my smile to my ears. Claws had never mutilated the crescent on my head and carved new ones into me. I was even impaled through my shoulder. Painful experience that.

Bleeding heavily when my pelt, more blood than fur, on its own wrapped around me. She tore at it, and it came out in patches.

If a demoness had ever sliced neatly I knew nothing about it.

Another burst of power.

I remember the roar of the flames, how they burned without burning. Foxfire doesn't burn. It doesn't char the skin until crackling in its own greases. It chills the body, robs the spirit and scorches the soul. And I was drifting…. drifting as to the depths of cold waters, and very sleepy. I caught myself shivering, and when the shiver was strongest, and her body rose at the hips and into mine, I fainted against her.

Then Tenseiga, blessed Tenseiga, pulled me from that icy precipice. What a surprise to discover that it could save my body from destruction and my mind from madness.

Sheer tyranny of will healed my wounds. And a terrible rage came over me. Fighting this way, grappling like wildcats locked in a bloody embrace did not suit me. No longer were we the epitome of grace. Tamamae had reduced us to torn silk and carnage.

But if she insisted…

Pushing her head into the damp grasses beneath me, I let her see the malice spread over my face, let her feel the full hardness of me just for her to understand that I didn't give a shit about it.

"Cur!" she tried to scream. And oh, did she fight to say it with my hand at her throat. I was gouging into her, deep, lifting her, and she screamed the slur again. Her neck sizzled—my poison had not been idle—but did not melt. Tamamae was a great demon after all.

Suddenly she grew very still. Youki moved out of her, and her eyes reddened. She grimaced terribly at me, and I grimaced back as my true self broke through. And when my perspective changed and my paws hit the ground, we went down in a tangle of limbs and snapping teeth.

Nine tails, two glowing red eyes, her fangs were cruel.

Mine was crueler.

And those snapping teeth of hers were baffled by the mystery of my fur. Around her neck, she had no such protection. I sank easily into her yielding flesh.

Her hot blood was like ambrosia spilling into my mouth, and in my rapture back and forth went my tail. I had even shut my eyes—what sport it was!

Chaos now. She became frantic. My teeth sinking deeper, she rioted against me. And it was a mad riot. Yet the hurt she gave, the teeth in my shoulder, didn't matter. In this colossal body I was deadlier, more robust, more ironlike with muscle, more ruthless, and more vicious. Tamamae was just a delicate muzzle on stilts.

However, by her severest contortion and neck arching, that muzzle of hers bit clean through mine.

I let her go and she fled.

But I was a hound coursing game—and one has no idea the lucid state of mind when pursuing fleeing hind-legs. Nothing mattered but getting back to the bloodied mat of fur between two pricked ears.

Crashing out of the forest at full tilt. Turn for turn I stayed with her, a heroic effort on three legs. She was swift, stealing backward glances and taunting me with her tails. My muscles burned. This was a cruel sprint across the rice fields, but I drove on my complaining body, tightened the gap and caught one tail in my teeth.

I should not have done this.

My entire body went stiff. I came to a full stop when she returned to her human form and pointed. "It's a trick! I tricked you, Sesshomaru!" Frozen. I tried to change but no matter how I willed it I was a massive dog. "For you I will gladly sacrifice a tail." Growls rumbling from me as she flashed her fangs, laughing. "You! Oh, you—I know what I'll do. I know just what I'll do."

Eyes darting back and forth. Still could not move, and could no longer look down and sneer. I became wild in my body. Could only be wild until I knew the reason to be worried.

Tamamae angled her head into the night, listening. There was nothing but the roar of blood in my ears.

Beyond the rice fields lay a sleepy ningen village. In front of me there was space and that bitch, and it was into this space did I want to fly and rip off her laughing head. She turned to me. I felt a spasm of alarm. "Do you hear them?" Dogs. Mortal dogs barking in the village. "Relatives of yours?"

My jaw clenched. _Let me be an animal with this bitch, _I thought then.

And I would never forget her face, how her teeth snapped together as she laughed and laughed. "You thought it would be that easy," she said. "That all you had to do was kill me. You fool. I die as easily as you do—not well! You will never own me and I will never grant your wish."

'Who do you think I am?' My roar shook the earth and, at last, I changed into my humanoid form.

Tamamae became serious suddenly. "You are very perfect. I can see that. But you are also _distinctly_ disturbing. For that I curse you, Sesshomaru." And when a swirling wisp rose with her hand, casting her face in an ominous pale light, I suspected then the gravity of my transgression. "I curse you to the nature that is the shame of your heritage—the very nature that has enabled the dog to come in from the wild to slide on their bellies at the feet of man.

And to whom dares to command you first… unrelenting obedience. You will obey, and will submit to every whim, every fancy."

Dogs barking again. The irony was terrible.

Though I had changed, my eyes gold again, her face was red. The night was red. Everything red. "What!" my voice clipped. "_What!" _Tamamae snapped her fingers and liquid ice passed through me. What happened then ended on my knees and with the wisp leaving my mouth on a breath.

"Ah," she sneered, "your knees are ready I see."

"If you think"—words left me. Still unable to move. Cold all over yet my throat burned. "Give me what I want and I'll have mercy on you. It's the wish I want. What use would I have for a thrall?"

"Lies," hissed Tamamae. "You have mercy for no one—this you have told me. And the merits that you do possess have a way of being that you are in no way curious of."

"_No_…" This nausea of worry. The weight of condemnation. A growing questioning… what have I done? "I have it. I can be merciful, but you jump ahead of your fate." She listened as I petitioned. Yes. Petition. That's what it was. What was it to beg? I didn't know. But there was clarity in my dread. I became afraid suddenly. Then I became angry.

"I am curious about something." I was glaring at Tamamae and hating her. "What was this wish of yours?"

"To wield any weapon of my choosing."

She made a face of comprehension, then grinned. "Ah, well if your master wills it… maybe you can take out your revenge on lesser creatures."

And she made like a blue orb and left, leaving me to my silent dread.

I wish I knew the severity of her cunning before. This was evidence of her genius. Because I had two options then—avoid humans for the rest of my long life, or to be so arrogant to willingly enslave myself.

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**A/N: **As you can imagine, it's incredibly difficult to capture Sesshomaru's voice in first person. It seemed natural to let "him" take the role as an unreliable narrator.

**Tamamae** is loosely based on _Tamamo-no-Mae_, the nine-tail fox demon. Speaking of tails, there's "_Ninetails_," a Pokémon—lol. According to its dex entry, it's a vengeful creature that will "curse anyone who pulls on its tail for 1000 years." Both Inuyasha and Sesshomaru seem susceptible to trickery. I thought it would be interesting to draw from it.

* A sensu is a Japanese foldable hand fan.


	2. Chapter 2

**Warning: **You were already warned!

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**Chapter two**

I prowled aimlessly. Could have been days or weeks. I don't remember.

Several times I caught Tamamae's scent, but she fucked me around. She was not a youkai, she was a ghost. And so clever, so very clever. To make it clear how hopeless I was, if I were standing in a downpour desperate and frustrated, if I had all the blackness of night to seethe and curse and vomit in... if Tamamae moved freely during rainstorms she may as well be supernatural. I can't track in the wet. Rain washes the scent away.

It wasn't all pettiness. Her death would forfeit my wish too. So however she delayed she will never daunt. My vengeance would be cruel and certain, and I still believed I only needed my one hand to do it.

Wandering like a prince without silk.

Here the forest reached out against the dusking horizon. Weary in the rain, I sprang into a tree and sat for a long time thinking what a fool I have become, what a cretin, what a dismality when a yelp broke in on my misery. I turned my eyes to the ground and saw that the ground was bleeding.

Three dogs circled a boar. A fourth lay in the mud split from its throat to its flank. The live dogs evaded gnashing tusks, daring no more than a quick snap. In the distance was the sound of pounding feet and shouting men. I felt myself hesitate. Humans I avoided not intentionally but subconsciously. Most turned the opposite way when walking my path. These, however, were too distracted to look up and notice me. I observed tensely.

"You stupid idiot!" cried one.

"No, no!" screamed the other.

I looked on hearing the rend and rip of tearing flesh, the soggy crunch of breaking bones—his leg was surely ruined. It wasn't a leg anymore, but a broken hinge attached only by tendon. The dogs intervened in vain. To the boar, this screamer's leg was the thing, and his leg it kept.

Noisy vermin. They'll die, the dogs too.

I was leaving when more arrived; an adolescent and another dog. He stood there gaping at the grisly spectacle and, as if struck by nausea, appeared to swoon.

"Turn 'im loose goddamn you!" said one man, the other screaming still. The boy trembled as he fumbled with the leather thong tied to the tora-ge*. Curious thing, that dog. It stood proudly and barked very little. Leaning in, I had for a fleeting moment the sensation of suspense. Even I would bristle and bare my teeth when it pleased me. This animal had no mind for that.

Leather slipped and the tora flew at the boar. "Get! Get!" the boy shouted, which he repeated like a chant. There was a correspondence in thrashing between the word and the tora's shaking. Squealing pierced my ears. A boar's snout is its most sensitive place, and within seconds it was laid open and bleeding.

Seeing this was not without an effect on me. Agitation can give a shameless thrill, and my heart raced. Now _here _was a canine. It lost its footing but not its grip, that clinging devil. It held on despite the screeching, the spinning and turning, despite being trampled on and hurled to and fro. I could communicate with this creature no better than a man yet I… I identified with it.

And this realization, this horror had raised the hairs down my nape. Dread seeped between my ribs, working my claws deep into the tree upon which I sat. I saw something I didn't like. Not the gore. It was not the blubbering man whose leg seemed more knee-bone than tissue, nor serrated steel plunging through the boar's heart and lungs. Not even the fang of every dog ripping and tearing—no I rather enjoyed that.

It was the tora.

I can admit there is pleasure in slaughter, thrills and elations that all too easily demon-kind indulge in. However slender our sense of reason during such acts is beside the point. We have it. But in this dog was an exaggerated quality. Something stretched and stunted, something _manipulated_. This was mindless violence, and it attacked though its prey had been slain. It coveted its life as I'd covet a tick fat with my blood. I knew by the way the boy stroked it. He praised it, this eerie thing… this dog without jealousy of self.

I sought out another tree with an unshakable sensation of foreboding.

**OoOoOoOoO**

Hot days passed.

Mentally dead, I moved in a daze. Physically I was instinct, a lean spirit with twitching claws and crawling guts. Curious how the body can amble in such a state and even get an erection once in a while. In my search, that too had been neglected. Perhaps later a demoness would find herself with a beast on her back. For then I needed meat,—cuts and cuts of meat—succulent tenderloin, venison steaks, heart, liver. I reached a point that if I didn't eat I'd curl down on the forest floor. But no deer or boar nearby. No matter. Rabbit-sized then, like what rustled in the bushes.

Only it wasn't a rabbit. It was a child-fox, and he certainly knew how to bring the water to his eyes. "Please… I'm just a… I didn't…" He stopped stammering and started to scream. Lucky for him, eating child-foxes was something I'd rather not do. But he must stop. He cried in that pathetic way which was getting on my nerves, and I only have so much mercy for innocents.

"Stop crying. It's irritating."

"Why shouldn't I cry? You'll kill me."

"Courage, tiny one. You're petrified and it's useless."

His fear seemed to recede a little. "I don't understand."

"You will talk with me," I assured him, and he looked at me strangely. I should do the same. He was too young to be lonely and too full-blooded to smell like a human.

Now I wondered.

Vaguely I knew this scent.

"I don't know nothing," he said fast. Too fast.

"You lie already." I held him nearer. "Now you tell me what you know of the fox called—"

An arrow pierced my shoulder. The kit squirmed in my claws, and turning, I saw that hanyou thing's bitch taking from her quiver. "_You_," I rasped, and she released and shattered my bone spaulder completely. That bow of hers had a string like a hair-trigger—two arrows in the time it took to take a breath.

"The next one is through your head," she said, drawing another. That arrow was _glowing_ into a problem, and she had them by the plenty. One more may hurt but several would lay me straight.

And so it was a paralyzing moment. The forest yawned around us. My breathing became more pronounced. Her eyes, dark eyes drawing in the light from all angles, were fiercely belligerent and unafraid. All the time I glared my nerves were strung. I tried to think but my thoughts were too slippery. I watched her lips to get what she was saying now. It was something that lacked conviction, something that left me dangling in limbo for more than what sounded like a suggestion. I anticipated some terrible, impending thing, and rather flee my arrogance faced the curse I dared fuck with.

"Let him go or I'll shoot you with this arrow."

And that was all it took to make me mind, to make me hers. I knew it immediately. When my fist unlocked from the kit's tail, some invisible leash had been tethered to me. My heart slammed. Blood scorched my veins. I heard phantom commands when I looked at her, and felt the air against my gums.

"I hate that face," she said, "Gods do you make me hate you."

I was smiling in the way a dog smiles when a cruel hand reaches for it.

On her shoulder, the kit whispered in her ear, again looking at me strangely. Kagome seemed to be thinking.

"Don't relax yet." Her bow hadn't lowered, as if I'd get her. Like I could. The kit told her, didn't he? Was that not what he whispered? Surely he, young as he was, could smell fox-fire on my breath. But Kagome arrested herself. A crime of crimes, in my mind. Killing consists of going full length. If one starts with a claw they must end with a sword. Perhaps for the sake of tender green eyes? "You need to explain yourself. _Now_."

Explain what! That I could never learn the lesson of leaving foxes alone?

"I… What I wanted…." These were my words, more rasp than voice. Know it was not my _will _to speak. I spoke only because it was impossible not to.

"Three years and you're still a murderous bastard." Kagome approached with the boldness of one without fear. And I thought… this is not the girl I remembered. She was never a fainting blossom, but what hardened her so? And where is the half-breed? There wasn't a trace of him on her.

"I said answer me!"

Being forced to talk didn't mean one was forced to reveal.

"This one wouldn't dream of killing child-foxes."

Satisfied at least, she re-equipped her bow. "Touch Shippo again and I'll kill you myself. You hear me, Sesshomaru? Aren't you going to say anything?"

"What should I say?" I growled terribly then. "Bitch that you are, don't you know?" Caught between this form and my true self, the sound of my jaw cricking and separating from my face had no effect on her.

"I hate it."

My display affected the kit, however.

"I know," she said. "It's awful."

"Make him stop?"

"No. Let the bastard seethe. It's getting dark."

The kit stared at me until they disappeared from sight. And it was the most troublesome thing, his expression. Grins cannot hide behind tiny fangs. His had been a magnificent performance; crying at will knowing full well his Miko guardian lurked nearby.

I pulled on the arrows in my shoulder, suspecting sabotage.

Maybe if Kagome weren't near I wouldn't be in her possession. The curse would be a nullity.

Or so I thought until pain lashed through me.

The curse moved with Kagome, and I was drawn to her. Devastated to be so drawn to her. My indifference for all things in this world was even for myself at times. But this…. From within came a pinpointing urge to follow. I had no sentiments; merely compelled as my steps echoed about me.

I stopped.

What am I doing violating my nature and pride? I am grave and dignified, if not loneliness manifest.

After she disappeared it was strange at first, the trees were so quiet, but I was murderous and on the verge of screaming. From the depths of me I summoned the nastiest snarl, a wild, consuming snarl that rose all the way from my chest and sliced into my throat. Debris rose up to choke me as I whip-cracked everything in sight, still snarling as I tore into the trees. My throat was raw, burning like the acid gathering at my fingertips. I scorched the earth with it. Melted the world around me. In this moment I was a demon gone mad; mad at all things and myself.

I startled a wolf-youkai in my madness. If there ever was a demon that was the villain of life, _I_ was that demon. I reeled him in and, without let, beat him and beat him, until he was more dead than alive. But the wolf did not die quickly. He took his time with it. Back and forth I paced watching him bleed. Then I groaned at him with my sorry business. "I'm cursed you know. Have you ever caught a nine-tail?" I looked at him for a long time, waiting for an answer. But I wouldn't get one. He was dead now.

Suddenly there was that pain again. Trembling, I put my hand over it as it stole into me entirely. My soul ached as my heart ached; and it spread throughout, throbbing sharper and sharper, hotter and hotter until I was just the ache hunched over next to a dead wolf.

Something was happening but didn't make sense. Tortured with all the passion but none of the feeling. What logic could I take from this rather than go along with the absurdity? Was I sick for wanting to follow that bitch, if just to make it stop? Is this the true nature of my heritage? The need to _be with? _Suppose I did go and do what it was meant for me to do. What whims would I serve?

I couldn't bear this moral and physical vibration. My heart was rupturing. I was on the brink of gouging into my ribs and peeling back each one just to get at it.

Staring down the way she went, it was like standing on the edge of a cliff with my back to the fire. I didn't want to burn and I didn't want to jump. But the flames were lapping at my back, and more I didn't want to burn.

The chain attached to me gave a spiritual yank. And so I went, drawn to her but sick with the thought.

* * *

**A/N: **Darkness ahead.

* Tora-ge means _silver brindle. _The Kai Ken (tiger dog) and Akita Inu can have this coat pattern.


	3. Chapter 3

**Warning: **The last scene turns left. Spread the sacred salt! Spread it!

* * *

**Chapter Three**

They sat by the fire, talking, roasting meat. Our eyes met in the dark, it's just Kagome didn't know it. The ache was gone, but the problem was I knew relief only when she was near. Focused on her, I raised my claws, crooking them slowly and repeatedly.

But my body refused to fly at her with bad intentions, effectively killing what little trumpery of hope I had at liberating myself. It seemed the gravest offense was slashing into sacred flesh, and I despaired.

This was not a curse as much as a castration. It would've been a privilege to resent Kagome with my claws. Unfortunately, I now harbored a nature I knew nothing about. Most chilling was that my nerves may act independently of my mind, making it so emotions were felt not mentally but _physically_. This made my affliction the perfect horror. If I'm to shiver and burn, to have my stomach plummet when apart from her, how could I wander?

My hunt for Tamamae ended on a humid night.

"I know you're there," Kagome said suddenly, "and you know you're there, so why don't you step into the light?"

And I did, of course. I walked over, clumping because of my boots and scalding nausea. I stood silent and grim as she and the kit studied me closely, casting judgment.

Cicadas droned. Meat overcooked. Demons moaned in the hills across the glade.

My breath shuddered in and out of me. In addition to being scrutinized, from under long, dark lashes it seemed I was quietly appreciated.

"See," the kit started to say, "told you—I _told _you."

"Mm." Kagome was staring and I was heaving myself out of my ego. My dilemma was having nowhere else to live. "This seems like an angry curse."

"It is angry." The kit snatched a skewer from the fire. "But we're safe. Good thing too because we could use the h—"

"Sit down," Kagome told me, like it was an emergency. I promptly sat. With a profound distaste of myself I had done it.

I looked around thinking what misery there is in this, and that Kagome, a waif every inch of her, only needed a wolf demon to complete her canine collection.

Hating this. I hated the firelight flickering on their faces, the smuggery in the kit's eyes, the secret debauch in hers. That gave me pause. I narrowed my own, glowering at her through silver strands. Make no mistake, though I had never seen it set in human features before, the predator in me knew such a look. It's just I wondered why it was there.

"Upset?" she asked.

"Profoundly." Trembling, my voice sounded thick and dangerous.

"It's your fault for messing with foxes. Be mad at yourself!"

I put a glare on the bone between the kit's greasy fingers. There was still meat on it. He ate because hurting him was the same as hurting her.

"What's it like… this curse? Will you talk?"

Certainly not. But she told me to _speak_ and my throat unlocked.

"No."

"That's too bad," she said, smirking. "Explain it to me."

"My body refuses to move in my direction. It seeks—" I stopped suddenly. She enjoyed this. I could tell by the way her head had dipped, the set of her shoulders.

"Keep going."

"My desire to kill you is greater than your powers, and more respectable."

The kit muttered something. "What a guy" it sounded like.

"Is that so?" she said, and looking at me with the softest, most insidious smile.

It wasn't the implication that unsettled me. Rather her switching back and forth before my eyes. I knew what a saint was. She was no saint. The kit was oblivious; too wet behind the ears to know Kagome had the spirit of a mistress.

Having had his fill, he yawned. "I have to pee."

"Don't go far," Kagome said to him, but when she turned to me her voice fell to a confidential, low whisper. "I could have you on your knees. Let me rephrase that… I can make you just to see it happen."

The thought of scraping for a bitch of average breed and ability swelled my blood to a rolling boil. Fangs lengthening behind my lips, every part of me said, 'Snatch her up fast, squeeze until her eyes roll white, until the kit screams… until—' Until what! Fuck me. There's nothing to do about any of this.

"Come here." She made a gesture and I moved, obedient but struggling. Our thighs touched. "You understand, don't you? It's a long way down from that lofty height of yours."

The tension between us was so tightly drawn it was nearly audible. The slightest pressure, a strand of hair, the merest particle even, would collapse the air itself. Now I knew for sure. This was bitched up from the start. What happened in the forest, a trap. She wanted to own me, to possess me, to control the panting beast seeing her now in muted color and altered definitions.

"Don't. Stay like this."

"... what."

"Stay in _this _form," she reiterated, each word smoothing the serrated edges along my face. It was at the end of two ivory points to argue, but then an intrusion.

"What's going on?"

Kagome retreated into herself. "Nothing, Shippo. If you're tired you can sleep on my mat."

The kit could hardly keep his eyes open. He hugged her, accepted her offer and was dead to the world in minutes.

A moment for hot thoughts.

"Let me make myself perfectly clear," I said.

"Don't bother. In fact... be quiet."

Something fell from me when my vocal cords tightened. I had managed some strangled little sound and nothing thereafter. I reached for the earth, gouging into cool grasses. I needed to be free and on the loose, but she was there... up against where my arm used to be. She smelled of sweat and the outside, a hint of citrus. Perhaps it wasn't so unpleasant to smell, but get her away from me. I couldn't bare being this close to her.

Kagome didn't speak. However artificial the silence she created for herself she thrived in it perfectly. She didn't even look at me. She didn't care if I gasped or trembled, if my glare persuaded fires to burn better. She had no right to be sitting there like a Miko, ignoring me, adjusting the sleeves of her white robes.

Taking a cup, she sipped it and, staring into space, for a long time appeared to be thinking.

**OoOoOoOoO**

We sat silently. Close together, freedom six thousand miles away. My eyes were closed. Clothing rustled. The fire crackled and the kit snored softly. Something moved in the distance that sounded like heavy feet. Probably ogres. But I felt something crawling up my neck. My hair was alive. I looked at Kagome to see it slipping from her fingers like garments. Instinct told me to push her away. Intuition, however, told me I was to tolerate handling if it pleased her.

And please her it did. She explored. Coy at first, as if expecting some danger, but now with a frankness that surprised me. An empty sleeve interested her, and I flinched as her hand slithered inside it. The arm had been lost at no cost of pride, but her prying curiosity turned my stomach.

Hours had passed since she told me to shut up, but presently dazed I didn't think to confirm if talking were possible again. Hands slid down to my waist. She pulled Tensegia from my sash, and for a moment inspected the sheath. It rang as she drew it. I watched her run a finger along the edge, then her arm and leg. The blade merely gleamed as she did this, but if there ever was a time I wished it would cut it was then.

The child-fox turned in his sleep.

"Why do you have a kit?"

"Because no one else will have him." She sheathed Tenseiga and gave it back. "But that's not what you wanted to ask."

"No… it's not. Where is the half-breed?"

"Why?" she asked. "You still pining for his sword?"

"Yes."

Kagome was slow to respond. She poured herself a drink. Cheap sake it smelled like. Cheap would suffice. I'd drink it by the barrel. Drown in it. Sobriety was also the enemy. "Who knows," she finally answered, toneless.

"You're his wench."

"Not anymore." She tipped back her cup, finishing it. "Not for some time. He's got a new one… or old I should say."

I dragged my eyes from her, turning into profile. "You mean…"

"The dead priestess."

_Dead_. Suddenly her death sickened. Who wants a dead whore! Oh, but you do, little brother. Regardless, the day I start fucking humans is the day my dignity dies. "So… he prefers his flesh cold." This prickled her. "How sad for you then. He rather have himself fucked by a corpse."

"If you're jealous that could be arranged."

"Listen to this vulnerable bitch." I nearly laughed. "Plant your suggestions, but you haven't the belly for such depravities. You'd never dare that."

"No… no, I suppose I wouldn't."

Yet in her eyes was a dark intimacy for me. I didn't know how to feel about it. Had no thought process for it… until I did.

"The curse will break someday," I warned. "If you have any affection for your life you will be careful with what you say and do."

Chuckling was not what I wanted to hear. "... careful?" She moved against me, this time taking my fur. She stroked it, the only human to have ever felt the softness of it. I was growling when she yanked me nearer. "Why?" she asked, breathing on me. "Aren't you mine? Will you not strain to obey me completely?"

I needed a moment for the liberties she all too eagerly helped herself to. She _pet _me. The bitch pet me. Her hands felt hot on my neck, caressing me, stroking me; in my hair now and smoothing it from my cringing face. The worst of this wasn't the act but that I didn't hate it entirely. It's like... I should be so pleased to have pleased her. I swallowed whole that loathsome feeling. Again, the nature I knew nothing about. But I would learn, and fast. No longer was there a need to weigh over it, sit around and moralize about it. It's exactly as Tamamae had said: _'You will obey. You will submit to every whim, every fancy.'_

And here I was, doing just that.

"Was it not Kagome who said she hated Sesshomaru? Why have me? Why stroke me?"

"Ah." In her delight she lengthened the word. "Your face… you're struggling and surrendering at the same time. I live for it."

"You… live for it."

She drew back as if to get a better look at me.

"Live for it. Oh, you know. I get off on it."

My breath caught.

"I will kill… I will…"

"Go on," she said, her voice a dare, her grip crippling. She had drawn onto her knees, holding my chin, forcing me to look up at her. A ripping little sound won her gaze. My claws had embedded into her hakama. "I'm going to punish you for that."

Shoving my face away, softly she said to me, "See that fallen tree there? Go to it."

I started to rise and she laughed. I'm not well equipped to deal with mockery. But if I thought I was angry then I knew nothing of the anger I'd experience next.

"Not like that. On your hands and knees."

Gnashing my teeth, I got down and crawled. I tossed my hair over my shoulder. Kagome watched. This made her so happy. One wouldn't know it at first glance but I smelled it. It wafted from her.

Where she wanted, I was not so far away that she needed to speak louder.

"Sit back on your heels, Sesshomaru, with your hand behind your head."

My hand was shaking and my neck was damp with sweat. I tried to ask why but _"shhh," _she told me. In my head my voice was hoarse. I needed to scream. In my humiliation, I found it difficult to see straight.

"If you must know… because I'd like to see it." I made no attempt to suppress my aura, and the night which surrounded us became frantically still. Even the crickets had rest their legs. "Stay like that until morning. I don't want you to move so much as an inch. I can make you shut up, but the choice is yours to speak to me nicely."

A thunderous rage swept through me. I swore I'd kill her. Before I intended to be quick about it but no longer. I'd choke the life out of her. Choking would be fitting, more intimate.

As she settled down next to the kit, I fantasized about how I'd do it. Staring at the tree, I imagined slapping her against it and giving her a prick that would set that mouth of hers quite wide, all while tearing and flaying and leaving on the white canvas of her face bold streaks of red. I'd do it as calmly as I have drank saucers of wine.

—I lie, of course, because the sight of her being fed, seeing her feast, would have me thrusting in that hard, animal way, reckless of any reiki searing into me, determined only to have my will.

But what's that gurgling sound, the scrape of dull teeth? Here bitch, bite down on my claws. Now let me hold you open. That's it. Tremble, riot, dig your nails into me if you must. Let me see the white of your eyes, set your jaw a little wider, crush your nose against my stomach, feel your convulsing panic. Breathe like that if you can. Hn… but you can't, can you? Not choking on your own spit and blood, you can't. It makes a sticky-wet sound that I like. I may choke you twice.

The last she'd see before her death would be smiling fang-teeth and bleeding eyes. I swore to it.

I was panting and she told me to shut up.

* * *

**A/N: **It's a fem-dom fic! Yay. The start of the main plot is next.


	4. Chapter 4

**Warning:** It's not so bad... maybe.

* * *

It took a year for night to pass—a long, aching night of trembling on knees eaten up by insects, all while tormented with dark fantasies of her. A night of seething, of watching the stars stretch across the sky as I stretched in my skin, when bloodlust seemed my only reprieve.

Kagome woke to find me arranged exactly as she had left me—in perfect degradation. Damp and miserable, I was in a deplorable state. Silk clung to me, and my fur was limp and clumped together around my neck. I had fought the spell for hours, straining against it in intervals. It was a hopeless endeavor. The curse held without a spasm. Not even permitting me to lift my fur so much as an inch for some relief in the oppressive humidity.

She rose from the ground, an empress rising from her throne. When I saw her sashaying over to greet me, her garments rippling about her, I became more aware of the cramp in my arm. I remember distinctly the shame I felt as I craned up at her, the pin-prickling of tensing claw-tips in my scalp as I swayed on unsteady knees.

In the blue morning, the crescent moon pretending to be gone when it wasn't, in front of me, Kagome let time pass. Nonchalance reigned in her posture. I glared with some anxiety because her stare threatened what remained of my dignity, and my contempt waxed and waxed. Sweat beaded down my throat, settling into the hollow of my collarbone. Through my nose I exhaled a sigh of relief, but it wasn't calm—it was hot and complicated. There wasn't anything exciting about this.

Yet I couldn't understand my sudden fascination with her face, or the vibrant thrill I felt having all of its attention. _Begrudgingly,_ I noticed Kagome had a beauty that was perhaps inferior to demoness, but still alluring. Delicate in all her features, she was rather the idea than the definition of beauty. But had she any unique markings, any bright coloring,—like that which gave demoness their spice—I might have considered her beautiful.

Still, her appeal was an acquired taste easily swallowed. And nascent tastes aside, despite feeling lower than a wine cellar for acknowledging this, I told myself it's just the way the curse behaved.

But I ramble.

Kagome smoothed her hair with one hand and sat. "Morning," she greeted at last. The gall. But she did interrupt thoughts I didn't wish to complete. "Put your arm down. Sit. Relax."

Almost immediately I preened myself. On the outside I appeared unbothered. But inside I was wracked by nausea. Such a simple indulgence, grooming oneself. Hard to appreciate unless unable to do it. I willed a tremor down my pelt until it draped softly on one shoulder. Kagome merely watched, an intrigued look in her eyes. The filth grimed into my knees was lifted the same way, and when I was white and pristine, she offered meat from last night's fire.

"Take that damned rabbit of yours," I spat at her, baring my fangs to their roots. "Who asked you for burnt meat?"

Secretly, I was famished and so sick with hunger that I had taken to considering her offer. But I let it be, so I could be proud in spite of wanting another sniff.

"Exhaustion looks horrible on you. You feel it strongly because you're so arrogant." She briefly touched my cheek, her sympathetic voice not quite a lie. "But you don't want it to go on like this, do you?"

"Your touch humiliates me," I answered. And as an afterthought: "I can't be parted from my pride so easily."

"Hm," she hummed, then tossed the meat away after a bite. "I can't imagine being that enamored with my own ego. Why don't you save yourself some grief?"

"_Fuck you_," I said under my breath. Her brows rose and I said it again, louder, angrier: "Fuck you."

"I could have sworn I told you to talk nicely to me."

"It seems you are still having trouble comprehending who you trifle with. Do you think this will not end badly for you?" My voice rose, commanding. "Do you think I enjoy hearing your voice, your childly demands? "'_Shut up_,'" I mimicked bitterly in a tone that made her grin. "'Shut up, I live for it, I get off on it, sit back on your heels, Sesshomaru, shut up!'"

Now she laughed. "That's pretty good. I don't sound like that but not bad."

She didn't understand. I'd sooner bite off my tongue than give one kind word to her. There is nothing she can say, nothing she can do that could extract the last growl from me. Behind it would always be another.

"I refuse to entertain your sorry delusions."

"My sorry what?" Kagome wasn't laughing anymore, but still she smiled. "What do you mean 'delusions.'"

"I was born cunning and harsh. Set in my ways because they were set very early. Unlike you," I added, "veering off your lighted path, going from debauch to virtue and from virtue to penance. By the way you thrash on your pallet at night you are surely miserable." This wiped the smile from her face. Got her heart vibrating. "Forever bitter, relentlessly tormented, the half-breed's ghost being what you're tormented with. Have another drink, Miko. Your entire time here is spent detesting him anyway… and _now_ needing me for something."

Kagome masked her private tragedy well, but it was in her aura; betrayal, misfortune, rage, grief. She had been wandering, walking and walking for years, rubbing raw the soles of her feet. Pain has a smell, a sound, a certain color. Seeing it spread over her face and hearing it pound against her rib cage was exhilarating. I leaned in on the wet grass to appreciate it better, the way she gripped the linings of her sleeves too. In my mind, I cried for more and more of her pain, for crueler miseries. I wanted my brother to fall from the sky, if only to crash down on top of his dead, porcelain whore, and dare Kagome to shrug about it.

But the pain was too old. Gone just like that. She _did _lift and drop her shoulders. "Are you finished?" she asked. "That tongue of yours is nasty, I'll admit. I'm impressed."

Frustrating to hear. There's something unsatisfying about a mortal without feelings. Like a cunt without grip. I just sat there listening to her reasons for not caring about Inuyasha, knowing she lied but unable to prove it. The more she talked the more my muscles ached. My stomach ached. My very heart ached. I couldn't take it anymore. I bit out a snarl that was part bark and more rasp, as if a wolf and a wildcat had cleared their throats at the same time.

"Out with it!" I demanded, rousing the child-fox from a deep slumber. "Do one thing or the other, you bitch, but do not leave me in the dark. What right do you have to steal my time, control my body and have me for your companion?"

"You think I _want_ your companionship?"

"What _do_ you want?"

"Your strength," she replied, and rather matter of factly. As her hand disappeared inside her kimono, a creeping horror began to swell in my chest. I remembered the dogs I saw in the forest days prior, in particular the witless silver brindle and its clinging jaws. A sparkling, pink shimmer refocused my gaze, bringing me back. "You see this? This is what I've collected on my own. It wasn't easy. As you very well know, I'm an excellent shot, but my power…" She lowered her voice as to not disturb her kit. "Let's just say demons who use more than three shards are a real challenge."

"The point, and quickly."

"No, no," she said scoldingly. "You wanted to know. Anyway, when rumors of a dog who got the tail end of a curse began to spread, I asked a fox about it. 'What did he look like?' I said. 'Do you know his name?'" So it was known. How embarrassing. My mother must be beside herself. Not that she'd lift a claw to do anything about it, however. "Your reputation precedes you. He was so afraid that he wouldn't even say your name. But I knew it was you.'"

I could only listen and despair.

"Look at me, Sesshomaru. I can sense sacred jewel shards. And there's four shards lumbering around in that forest over there," she explained, pointing northwest. "But that's just it. They're over _there_ somewhere. And this demon moves at night. But you," she paused for emphasis, "you can see in the dark as well as the day." I followed her finger, listening, scenting. "Not yet. You're awfully pale."

"Useless," I said. "Your words are useless, so spare me your empty concern."

"I'm afraid I can't do that. Tell me, what do you need?"

"... something appropriately sized and freshly killed."

"And how often?"

"I prefer to eat every day."

"That's great!" she exclaimed, slapping my thigh. "We do too, you know. Shippo will gladly eat anything, and quite frankly you being here is the closest we'll ever get to seeing merchants. I like pork."

**OoOoOoOoO**

Where many other youkai would have dragged their feet or had their pride broken, I adjusted myself and went to task, and at no cost of pride. Among the shaded trees, I walked grandly, because in my mind I was still a lord—lord of all skittering, slithering and flying things.

I caught a young boar, not much bigger than a fawn, the deciding blow piercing its spine before it could utter a squeal. I went for the liver first, which was soft as cream, then the kidneys. The haunches were sweet and nutty and just as tender. My façade of humanity faded during this. It's not to say I was savage. Only my claws were covered in blood. But if the man I heard approaching were to happen on the scene, he'd probably beat his mare into the gallop humans felt mandatory when they saw demons eat.

Demon crow gathered in the branches above me. As they waited for the intestine I discarded, I stared down a path that would take me far away from servitude. The thought was enough to inspire a flutter of that all consuming ache, and I made my way back to Kagome.

Walking out of the woods, my claws wet and shining as I carried the hollowed out carcass of my half-eaten spoil, I saw them sitting on the ground, scratching their mosquito bites—and those pale, lithe fingers of hers clutching her bow tenaciously. In ogre territory, if a Miko has arrows they should be ready. Get caught with empty hands and something might chew them off.

Without a word, I dropped the animal between them and sat. There was a kind of subdued force in the air, a tendril of repressed violence, as if the palpable clash of reiki and demonic energy would explode at any given moment.

Kagome pulled a knife.

But we were a pack now. A Miko, a child-fox and a demon dog. All together in the dirt, scratching our bites, sharing my kill.

Kagome cut strips for cooking, and the kit snatched what she couldn't cut quick enough.

"So good when it's fresh like this," he said. "Any rice?"

"Not a grain," she replied.

"We'll get some soon, won't we?"

They talked. It is difficult to follow the kit's words because he said nothing. He thought as he spoke, as children tended to do. He captured my attention when he mentioned finding someone.

"So long as dogs can do the thing they do so well, we'll find him," Kagome told him.

"And what is it that my kind can do so well, praytell?"

"What can your kind do?" she repeated. My gaze narrowed when she pointed at her nose, then with the edge of the knife, her bow. "Isn't it obvious? You turn it up every chance you get. And what's a hunter without a hunting dog anyway?"

There it was. The worst thing I had ever heard, and I myself in no position to object. I knew there would be extortion, but the implication was degrading.

I stared beyond her, scanning the rolling meadow shrouded with mist, knowing the sadism I felt would be in my eyes. Blood dried stickily between my fingers while I dreamt of rape, of thrashing on the grass. I'd use my claws, I thought. Yes, every knuckle. I'll shove them in her. But was it new? Was it used? I should ask my brother. Tell him I didn't stop till I reached the back of her teeth.

These imaginings were no more than episodic. Rather a thousand rages without direction. My foremost object was her mouth overwhelming my ears with screams of mercy—and of course, the fox who'd force me to put the screams in her throat in the first place.

Something in the air flinched. It's possible she knew of my murderous thoughts, of the tempest of violences surging through me. For one as undemonstrative as myself, the tick in my brow certainly betrayed a fiendish preoccupation. This straightened her back, seeming to send a shiver so nuanced, so subtle that instead of scratching myself, I might have to scratch her to get at it.

But her bow was within easy reach, and all she needed to do was glance to make me understand. _'Not in front of the kit, _her eyes had said. Of course not. Can't let him see who you really are. The kind of girl careful to look right and left before satisfying her curiosities. I take it I should expect her to be virtuous and well behaved so long as we do not find ourselves alone under darkened skies, in which case the dark would allow her to forget the one she was being virtuous and well behaved for.

But she is hopelessly a Miko. I wager, when she comes to the aid of others, when people thank her for her healing touch, she believes she is good. Maybe when she purifies demons, maybe in the moment it was all virtue and passion, but a fight inside, a fight alone against a spirit that pursued her in her sleep, seized her, that left her so bitter that she rather oppress me because in me she saw him. The damned head case. Is there anything worse than a scorned priestess? I've heard this story before.

A replacement, that's what she wanted. Someone to fill Inuyasha's role. I didn't care what she needed the shards for, Naraku was dead—thanks to me. I just didn't want to be apart of it.


	5. Chapter 5

**Slight warning. It's not **_**that**_** graphic. **

**OoOoOoOoO**

In the after-light of dusk, I knew that tonight I would go unmolested.

I was hunting a demon in the possession of four shards, because Kagome had told me to do it. What other nights may bring I did not know. Then, I had no idea of knowing, nor did I let the mystery to worry me. With my _mistress's_ legs wrapped tightly around my waist, the kit clinging to her neck as she clung to mine, I felt the heat of her through my clothing. The friction irritated my back, which was studded with bites. But I didn't complain about it. I walked through the marsh, imperiously, determinedly. Not because she told me to, but because it couldn't be helped.

Judging from the bones that were littered on the ground, the wetlands are a place ningen come when they grow weary of living. They might not have been suicidal, but traveling through ogre territory as a mortal was at least the equivalent of disturbing a sleeping bear in its den, repeatedly.

I stepped over a human skull and let it distract me. In the back of my mouth, where my top and bottom jaw meet, are teeth that shear but do not grind. But as I carried Kagome through pond lilies, stagnant water, and mud, grind them I did. Reflecting on trivial curiosities was preferable to waiting for bitterness to pass. I wondered how long I would need to live to transform myself into a disguise so flawless that even my teeth would seem indistinguishable from a human's.

"We're close," Kagome said, to which I replied with silence. I had already sensed its aura.

When I found him, he made me wish my nose wasn't so keen.

It was an ugly ogre that smelled like fermented yeast and rotten lotus roots. The scent very well floored me. But that wasn't the worst of him. As for his face, everywhere I looked was like an assault. Gangrene eyes. Jowls gnawed by blisters. Voice like miso soup. He was a receptacle of everything monstrous, of every physical horror, a creature whose grin was so hideous it would frighten demon children.

Protruding from its lower jaw were two tusks the color of sulfur. It started to talk, and though I stood a good distance away, his breath still gave me grief. "Who's there," it said, more gurgle than voice.

My assessment was quick. A low tier demon bolstered by the power of four shards was not my equal. Kagome jumped down and I raised my hand.

"Wait," she told me.

"Biding time, Priestess?"

All but I looked at the ogre.

Kagome drew from her quiver, nocking an arrow. "Something like that."

There was a rumbling sound. The brute was laughing.

"Testing your power? Go ahead. I have nothing to fear from a novice priestess… and her cur dog."

I loathe that word. _Cur. _

And I knew he had glanced at me but my eyes were on her. It was as if she had suddenly became my entire world. I studied her very closely, the night in her eyes, the smirk on her lips. Set legs and the tension twanging through her bowstring.

Kagome took the shot.

No effect.

I continued to stare at her. I didn't have to. There wasn't a command.

There was a wild throbbing in my chest as I watched her nock another. Again, it did nothing, and again the ogre gurgled out its laugh.

Now she was bothered. I found myself bothered too. And as she reached for another arrow, frustrated, I was palpitating and growing all the more frustrated right along with her. It was hard standing there erect as a dog, watching arrows ricochet off massive moss-colored arms. The whining in my ears made it worse, so I plucked the kit from my shoulder and set him down.

I was so focused on her that I had not heard the ogre moving. Abruptly, I heard him standing still and the squelch of mud under heavy feet, then I smelled the sour roots.

Nodding to herself, Kagome did not draw. With a toss of black hair enough for two heads, she turned to me. The gesture she made with her hands, her body, to my surprise had already told my claws what they needed to know. "The shards are in his arms. Get them—"

I summoned a lash that left the ogre without two arms and half a face. Another flick of my pale wrist and the limbs landed with a plop at her feet.

Kagome gasped, twisting away as the ogre became wildly animated. This was interesting to me. Had she an ounce of self-awareness she would have turned blind, deaf and dumb after such a command. _'Get them,'_ she ordered, and I had. Her will be done however grisly. There they were, the shards, writhing but sparkling bright nonetheless.

Glimpsing the droplets of red that peppered her robes, I thought the surgery went over well. The bloody side of the ogre's face was a marked improvement to what was previously there.

Speaking of which, he had collapsed onto the ground in a gory heap, roaring in agony and flailing his severed joints around. It was almost comical.

Distinctly uncomfortable, Kagome faced me. "Sesshomaru!" she yelled in a strong and sharp voice. So much in a shout. My eyelids rose, and involuntarily I started into attention. She was in my face, standing on tiptoe, jabbing my armored chest with her finger. "Don't think I don't know what you're trying to do," she scolded.

I'll never admit it to her, but during this scolding, I was _inexplicably_ crestfallen.

"What I'm trying to do?" I knew what I tried to do. But it turned into something else, something much more profound, something that would keep me from sleeping for many nights. "You said the shards… The shards are in his arms."

The ogre continued to wail, actively hysteric.

Kagome glared, more disordered than angry—intrigued? And as she glared, what I felt was so strange. She seemed to feel it too, thinking about it. Then she shook her head as if to say no and stepped away from me. The exact moment I realized that we were breathing the same breath like one excited predator.

I scarcely kept an anticipatory shudder to myself.

"You know damn right," she said. "That's not what I meant."

_Apologies._

"I never needed permission to maim before, or to kill."

I didn't want to ask, so, with my eyes, I switched between her and the ogre, hinting. But every time I looked at her she gave me a revelation, a thrill.

_Don't look at her face all the time_. _Sort yourself out. Stop shaking and look at that tree over there. Look at the ground. The ground is bleeding, twitching, shimmering. _

"Come," I urged her, "your command. So the next time I see such a look I'll know its meaning." Once again, I found myself without a filter. My words were said with heat and fervor, proving my powerful desire to have this happen. Nothing livens the blood like the possibility of slaughter. Evidently, nothing livens it more than being told to do it too. It would be both logical and pleasurable to embrace it, to reap delight from it. Just as nature intended of me. "Why do you struggle? Did you mourn every demon the half-breed killed? Let a cripple one live and his comrades will come for you."

"He's right," the nearly forgotten child-fox had said from the safety of a branch. "I'm so tired, Kagome. Tired of running, always moving. And there's so many…"

"Who is 'many'?" I asked.

"Youkai," he said.

Interesting. The kit had more sense than most.

"You never mentioned that."

"Must have slipped my mind," Kagome replied.

A lie.

But her expression was sufficient to ignite every one of my nerves. Every sense became heightened to 11, and my surroundings were too loud, too quiet, too open, too close.

"Let's hear it."

Kagome opened and immediately shut her mouth. It seemed she knew how to talk but had forgotten how it worked. But there's an ogre with half a face and something had to be done about it. "Prolonged suffering makes my skin crawl."

Did she expect me to be empathetic? More, what leapt to my eyes and ears was indecision, and I hated it.

"So vague," I said reproachfully, feigning ignorance. "If I'm to be an extension of your arrow, don't be vague, Miko. Say it." Her eyes widened as if just realizing the whims she was free to take with a word, a whip-crack, or a drop of poison.

Deep inside, I hated myself. Deeper, I was vibrating. But nothing in my eyes and nothing in my voice gave me away… yet.

She scoffed and re-equipped her bow. "I don't need you to coach me through your _own_ subjugation, okay? I may not understand what this curse is doing to you exactly, or even what it means for me,—because I know there's some messed up stuff going on in that head of yours—but this is ridiculous."

I let a rare chuckle slip. A malign smile stretched across my lips. "Isn't it?" I asked.

It was foolish to think fondly of myself, but now that I understood, I will deprave myself with the notion. I could reduce myself and close my eyes to the ugliness of my present reality.

Kagome too.

Even if she had the power, she would not be willing to wade through blood and guts to get what she wanted. She flirts with wickedness but wickedness does not live well in her. It thrives in me, however, sensual, smoldering. So I will endure disgrace, humiliation, and servitude in the belief that committing atrocities and making her watch will make this fate tolerable. She will entertain it because there's a depth in me that only she can reach inside and touch.

She shrugged off a tendril of alarm.

"Okay," she said at last, and I tensed. Straight faced, her voice even, it sounded like she was telling me about the weather. "But you'll do it quickly."

"... quickly," I repeated, positively delighted.

"And cleanly."

"_Ho_? Clean you say?" I made a point not to break eye contact as I materialized a whip that cut twice as neat as the whip before.

The demon slain, the swamp was rock quiet—or it would have been if not for my pronounced breathing.

_Only ogres?_ It was just a lowly beast. _Let there be hundreds of shards embedded in the arms of titans._ I'll melt and cut down each and every one.

We may even cross paths with Tamamae someday. There would be no hesitation if I were to have a second chance at touching her throat. Soon after, I'd touch my mistress's throat too.

With a knife, Kagome picked the shards from the ogre's arms.

Amazing what I noticed now by observing her. This is why mortal dogs are always _watching_; watching their masters and the people around them, following the white of human eyes, seeing what they see, knowing instinctively the difference between a friendly hand and one preparing to give a beating. The curse was altering the way I thought and felt, and I identified myself with long-buried inclinations, wondering what was to come next. No real effort was needed for this. Like claw-tips too close to burning coals, instinct will automatically snatch them away from harmful heat.

Her scent changed, as did her aura and posture. Kagome was beside herself as she dropped the shards into a small bottle. Then, as she tied the string, she glanced at me with possessive eyes, as if, in fact, I was merely a delayed delight that was soon to be indulged in. The dark intimacy that promised more than it suggested. It reminded me of demoness I had spread open on tables, beds, and floors. And I was the demon she was to eat!

"Well, anyway," she started to say, "you're as good as I thought you were. Maybe better."

I ignored her, pretending what she said was not the reason my legs trembled beneath me. When she faced me completely, I pretended none of what happened was the reason for the hot and rampant flood surging to my groin.

Kagome set her hand on my shoulder. Privately, this was good for me, her praise. And all too quickly, far more quickly than I had anticipated, I was beginning to lose the jealousy that I had so coveted in my prideful heart. I was staring beyond the dark splendor of her hair as delicate fingers caressed my face.

I steeled my jaw despite myself.


	6. Chapter 6

**Warnings are a little redundant at this point. **

**OoOoOoOoO**

Out of the wilderness, we found ourselves walking through a bustling village. People made way for us. Word of our arrival spread quickly, and they gathered in great numbers to see the young Miko in strange company. I said I would endure shame for my own sanity, but that was said in the heat of the moment. People used to avert their gaze when they saw me. Now every man, woman and child was staring boldly, drenching me in my humiliation.

They couldn't take their eyes off Kagome. They adored her. They praised her beauty and power. When people greeted her, she always greeted them in the same way—with a demure little smile and a nod. Charmed them to faith if they weren't already believers. Of course, they didn't know the true reason she had a demon of my caliber serving as her bitch, or that she told me to be silent moments before. However, publicly, undeserved admiration didn't seem to go to her head. She carried herself with the natural serenity expected of Miko, looking upon the world with calm eyes and a gentle sway in her hair.

A man, perhaps the village elder, emerged from the crowd. "Miko-sama," he said, and bowing as low as his arthritic body would allow. "To what honor do we owe this visit?"

"I have reason to believe there's a great demon nearby. But before I take care of that, I'd like to trade for supplies."

"You do your work very well," he stated, looking at me. "I had to come and see…"

"Yes," Kagome politely interrupted. "To see him."

There was a pause. "To see you as well. To see the priestess powerful enough to have a… ah—" He paused again. "You have a kitsune on your shoulder, but what is the white demon by your side?"

"He is a dog." All became still. "Don't be alarmed."

For a moment, no one heeded her. The villagers turned to one another, murmuring, talking amongst themselves. They spoke of legends, tales of Inuyoukai running alongside rulers centuries dead, our blood flowing in the veins of certain households, supposing to have tainted many royal families, and ignorant people. Father was a roaming dog but he didn't roam that much. But imagine that, if it were really true. Demon stock such as mine tainting and not _improving_.

"Won't you stay for a spell?" asked the elder. "My wife is poorly, as are others. We hired a monk, but he is more interested in the _comfort_ house than helping, the lecher." Kagome perked a bit. "Please say yes. We'll pay you handsomely."

"I'll be more than happy to help, but I couldn't possibly accept any money."

"There must be something we could offer you for your trouble. Comfortable lodgings, a hot meal, a warm bath perhaps?"

Her eyes lit up at the prospect of not having to bathe in cold rivers and streams, if just for a night. "That would be greatly appreciated."

"I insist! But please forgive me for asking. Is it safe?"

He must not have liked the pointed look in my eyes.

"Him?" Kagome flashed a reassuring smile. "He listens perfectly. And Shippo—"

"Hi!" the kit chimed brightly. "Do you have any dumplings here?"

"—is only a little mischievous. So there's nothing to worry about. You have my word."

**OoOoOoOoO**

My mistress is a rare Miko. If the way she cleaned and bandaged wounds weren't oddly advanced, or the way she brought down fevers which had lasted for weeks prior, it was her healing prowess. Ironic for the guardian of the Shikon no Tama.

Let me explain.

I say _rare_ because if Kagome could fight as well as healed she wouldn't have me. She wouldn't need anything but the fickle depths of her own soul. And it was an enormous soul. Far too large for a mortal less than two decades old. She compensated for her lacks by being an exceptional shot, her arrows relatively weak but numerous. On occasion, I observed her practicing this technique. Into a sakura tree she would fire one, then another, and before I knew what happened a dozen arrows were stuck in the bark.

Strange. Her quiver only held six.

And bizarre too was the technique that frustrated her most of all. She would shoot into the air, towards the sky, intending to hit the arrow with another. Once she grazed the fletching, which then produced brilliant flashes of pink and white; lights so bright, and so pure it was sufficient to suppress all nearby demonic auras—my own included. It made me feel lethargic. But just once did this happen, and after countless failed attempts. It seemed she couldn't gather her power quick enough to do whatever it was that she was trying to do.

"He's going to be okay. I promise."

I watched that very light, feeling its shine as it came from her hands. She was moving them over the chest of a young boy, towards his throat, until foul-smelling phlegm came out with a wheeze and a cough. After a spasm, the boy settled, resuming his motionlessness. Then, gradually, to gasps and praise, the color returned to his cheeks, and he sprang off the shrine's floor in perfect health and into his family's arms.

Kagome wiped sweat from her brow. This exhausted her, taking the sickness into her body and purifying it. But that was her burden alone. I didn't feel sorry for her.

Next, I accompanied her to the comfort house. On the way, I saw the kit playing with a group of children. They found amusement in his kitsune tricks and playthings. Thankfully Kagome left him to it. I disliked being alone with the little milk sucker.

"So you know this monk," I said. We were standing outside the brothel and Kagome hesitated on the stone steps.

"Sure do," she replied. "He owes me money. Now wait here."

As she went inside, I leaned against a pillar and waited.

Not long after a man approached the house. He didn't so much as glance at me as he staggered onto the wooden veranda. A madam appeared to introduce him to women with whom he might disappear behind a hand-painted shoji screen. With a slurring in his speech, he told her he desired a young girl so that he could show her something she had never seen. Monstrous even to demon-kind. But he didn't have enough coin for his libertine tastes, and would settle on a girl appropriately aged. Little did he know the one he chose would leave with him vernarally.

Acute hearing is bad sometimes. Noise all the time, creaking, grunting. I listened to the sounds of human debauchery with boredom set deeply in my features. Somewhere inside was a man who enjoyed being pegged. Elsewhere, a panting whore with an open palm, into which coins were dropped after a brief coupling.

To think a debt-collecting Miko wandered around in there. I might have found the thought amusing had I not heard the conversation between two conspiring whores.

"_Who is that crisp yet visually enjoyable demon?" _one asked.

"_He came with the priestess," _said the other.

"_Such fine clothing."_

"_He is well dressed… Oh, but you wouldn't!" _

"_Why shouldn't I? Money spends the same no matter who's giving it."_

My sleeves and hair rippled in the passing breeze, falling in long graceful folds as footsteps sounded on the planks behind me.

"Hello," said a sultry voice, the one that thought of me as beautiful. "Hey. You there… demon." I could smell the pan water on her, water I knew she had squat over while taking her whore's bath. It wasn't enough to wash away the scents of the five men she relieved today—nor the disease mortals called syphilis.

She was not worth the minimal effort needed to look.

"I can't see you, whore. My fur is in the way."

My contempt offended.

But her hand violated.

The fingers in my scalp stroked me into a rage. Why must humans touch so much? All the time touching and stroking. I am sick of this touching. _Sick, sick, sick_ of being handled when I didn't wish to be.

"Aren't we conceited for a Miko's pet—"

With a sweep of my entire body, much too fast for her to see, I was towering disdainfully over her. Yellow eyes and curling lips creates an image mortal minds aren't keen to process, and she began to stammer and shake. Her brain was telling her that, on a subconscious level, something was gravely wrong.

I leaned forward so that she could see the texture of my lips. And she had looked, and fixedly, at my mouth. I spoke slowly to her, my fangs showing with every word. "Now that you have all of my attention, what is it that you would like to say?"

One could imagine her fear when she stepped back. Only, I had such a way of moving that I was still in her face.

"I wasn't—hey, no. "Wait—"

"Didn't your mother ever teach you not to tease dogs?" Kagome was standing under the door with a small leather pouch in her hand, her head tilted to one side. She may have been the only woman to walk out of those doors with a dry behind and money in hand. "I'd appreciate it if you didn't provoke _my_ demon. Not only does he not want what you're selling, but he also doesn't have any money."

This was true. She had checked. Thoroughly.

"Priestess," said the whore who had come very close to being gutted, "did you say… you said he doesn't have any money?"

Kagome folded her arms. "Not one red coin. And I know what you're thinking and the answer is no. I won't pay. Not so he can sweat it out with you."

When she concluded her speech the gold miner made a face at us. Odd as it was, I was no longer upset, just focused. Kagome's calm demeanor made it so that mine was calm too. More were we able to influence one another this way, and it was in this way did she prefer to control me.

Without words, Kagome walked away. I followed, my steps falling obediently into hers. "I want to talk to you but go wait first. Go away for a while," she told me. "Find your way back to me tonight." Immediately, I turned on my heel. "_And Sesshomaru_," she called, a song in her voice, "behave yourself."

**OoOoOoOoO**

I wandered for three hours, sat down and fumed over a deer carcass for one, then turned around and wandered three more. I was so frustrated I could bite. Just fit the world between my teeth. I smelled her shadow, a ghost in my nose, knowing precisely who it was. They weren't bred better than her. If she would just come to me I'd go back to Kagome not happy but relieved.

I spread myself all over, my aura hanging in the air like a curse, weighing down on the leaves. I needed her to find me because I couldn't go to her. Not pulling on the end of a spell I couldn't.

That's the problem with inu females. They are far too lofty in their natures. They hurry down from the clouds for no one. Not for Gods, not for this Sesshomaru—_no one. _They love to tease. Love to let you near, only to then turn to the side as if to say, "What do you think of this? I suppose you want to fuck me now." It puts a snarl in your throat because she's watching you get all steamed up about it. I swear they do it just to see it happen—and I adore them all the more for it.

Come what will tonight,—because I surely wouldn't—the moon was where Kagome wanted it to be, and it was time to return to her.

Finding her was as simple as knowing her scent.

It led me to the far end of the elder's mansion, where inside she told me to leave my boots by the door because they will dirty the floors. There were two rooms separated by a screen and she took me into one of them. The kit was dead behind the other one—a coma brought on by a hard day's play and too many dumplings. I felt an odd anxiety. In my eyes were places to fall down; on the boxwood planks, smooth and cool under my feet, the futon in the middle of the room, where my anxiety was strongest, and all else—the hand showing me where to sit, the flickering lamp in one corner, my shadow crouching in another, and now the steps padding around me.

I sat neatly beside the futon, tight in my skin, watching Kagome when I could get away with it, but with less interest than the tray she arranged and the saké she set on it.

Then I heard a call that sent a jet down my fur.

She stopped. "Wolf demons?"

I shook my head once. A wolf's howl is heavy and low, monotone, not like the high, looping vocals coming from the mountains. "Inu," I said.

"Oh." Two saucers laid out. Our first drink together. "What's it saying?"

"_She_ is lonely." Howling again, and needing wine as Kagome stared pryingly at me. "She seeks male company."

"Poor thing," she said. "Is she part of your harem?"

"Harem." I had to repeat it. It was foreign-sounding and difficult to say. "What is that word?"

"Means one of your many."

Silence fell like a rock between us, and in the passing seconds, there was only the pouring of wine.

"That is to say," I started, reaching for the saucer, "do I have them all together?"

"Precisely."

And after finishing my first drink in one gulp, Kagome smirked and poured me another. I finished that one too. "Not possible. Inu females… one can't have any of this sort of arrangement with them. They do as they please, indulging who they please."

"And some, I would assume, more than others?"

"I am _some._"

"_Oh ho_," she exclaimed. "Are you now?" She set the jug down so I could serve myself. "Well, I suspected as much."

"But carefully," I continued. "And not too close together. They don't like to smell each other."

"I am in danger?"

"No."

I could tell getting drunk wasn't her plan. It was mine, however. And while she sipped her third I downed my ninth. Impending intoxication at least took the tinge off my frustrations and worries. The latter because her eyes were moving over me without emotion but with explicit absorption. I recognized that look. I'd given it myself, to demoness.

"I can't recall seeing one," she said. "Ever."

I could hardly remember the last I saw an inu bitch. It didn't matter now.

While Kagome went on about what she hadn't seen, all I could see was the thin yukata she wore. It had the shimmering silver silkiness of fabric as well made as my own, and, from the way it clung, not a stitch underneath.

My tenth was drunk slowly.

She talked about the cat tribe north of the village. Didn't hear much of it. Too warm and numb to catch what she was saying. I was watching her again, the float of her breasts and the spread away as she drank, the pert roundness of them when she swallowed. And when she turned, reaching for the fruit behind her, her back curved in a vulnerable way, its lines sweeping softly down to the most finely shaped ass. Nothing could have been more perfectly arched, not very large, but petite, firm. There was Kagome and there was that ass of hers. I liked them separately. A form of masturbation I knew, but I didn't care much for the former.

When she bit into the plum I had never looked at a piece of fruit so seriously. I found myself unsure what to think but trying to think it anyway. Decided drunkenly that it was our proximity—no, her nearness to _me_ and the scented oils she had bathed in, or something of that sort. But this nearness caused a stirring in my groin; this phenomenon when no one else is available, and one catches himself noticing, because in a dimly lit room all there was to do was sit and notice, sit there and ache for days, because there isn't a dignified way to ask to be let loose on the bitch still whining and ki-yiing for me outside.

"I would forbid you all those glares if they weren't so beautiful." I was pouring my eleventh when she said this and not knowing what to say to it. Truly, I hadn't a secure thought in days. She didn't let my silence daunt her. "Today was difficult for you. Understandable. But what I want to know is why are you still so proud? Do you think you're too good to talk to people, even if they are comfort women?"

I sat stunned, drunk and staring at her. The saké raised my temperature by two degrees. It mixed horribly with the venison in my stomach. "I am always proud."

"But don't you see, Sesshomaru, if you think of pleasing me it will be easier for you? Consider this, instead of nearly killing some woman, you should have asked yourself, 'Am I honoring my mistress by doing this? Do people find me honorable? Would Kagome kill this woman?'" She licked her lips. "Mm—this wine is sweet, isn't it? Delicious."

"Hadn't crossed my mind."

"What didn't?" she asked.

I could barely force the lies out of my throat. "Pleasing you… not killing."

"Well I'm so sorry for your mind," she said mockingly, as if I were a child. "But you must understand that there is no one out there in the village that's not better than you. So, if I tell you to be welcoming to humans, you will be friendly. That human is your friend because I said so." Gently, she took the saucer from my claws. "I don't want anyone touching you though."

"No. Just you."

"Now you're getting it." As she began to rummage through her things, I sat there mortally wounded. Tessaiga cutting me down to the bone was a flesh wound compared to her words. "Besides, it's not all bad. Not everyone fears you." She pulled a brush out of her bag. It was made from a material I couldn't identify. Come to think of it quite a few of her things were strange to me, the things she said. "You've learned some enjoy the sight of you, your striking face, your armor, your fancy clothing… this long hair that I cannot stop myself from touching."

Behind me, her fingers slid into my scalp and I didn't hate it. I didn't have that sick feeling. I rather liked what she was doing, the scratching, the brush passing easily and catching only on the odd tangle.

"_You are mine_," she said.

So succinct and to the point. But there was something in her voice that sobered me up quick. My eyes were on her like a dart. Even in this room, sitting so close to the oil lamp that I could smell the heat of it in her yukata, her eyes did not catch a flicker of light. I wasn't afraid seeing this. Demons do well in the dark. It's just, for a fleeting moment, I had the urge to gouge at something just beyond my grasp. There is reiki and there is youki. This was my reality and what I knew to be true. I didn't know what that was. It was neither and both and, until then, I did not consider what the curse meant for her too.

She picked up where she left off as if nothing happened.

"Now, you can please me in many ways, but this is the simplest way. My reputation is dear to me. Look after it as if it was your own. Do this and I won't have a reason to humiliate you. Got it?"

I stiffened, deep noises coming from me. "Yes—" Unhappy with my tone, she yanked me by the hair. Yanked the rasp right out of me. "Yes… Miko."

"That sounds so lovely, you have no idea." _Damn, _I thought_. Fuck. _"You have something to say, but right now all I want to hear is you telling me what I want to hear. What do I want, Sesshomaru?"

My face was hot with the thought. I sighed. I growled. "To please…" I whispered, as though saying it low enough would keep it a secret from myself.

But this wouldn't do.

She moved to sit in front of me. "What was that?" she asked sweetly. "Speak up."

Kagome intended to own and dominate simultaneously. I'd prefer it if she maintained a tenacious hate of me. If contempt revealed itself when she spoke to me, I wouldn't find her sensuality advancing along with the remnants of her personality so nerve-wracking. My nerves were already wild, in crisis with her thumb pressing softly against my lips. I tasted the plum's sweet juices as it dipped inside my mouth. I suppose there's turning over a dead body to poke it with a claw, but there's also deliberately pricking one's thumb on a demon's fang. Apparently this was one of her morbid curiosities. And would one believe this? The mere thought of biting was enough to hurl me into sickness. Or maybe it was the wine. It was a very good wine.

"Sesshomaru," she called.

"... please you, " I said automatically, without pride or dignity. I might never forgive myself. "You wish to be pleased."

"Gods! Can you stay put?" She was loosening my obi and I could not. I was shaking that much. "You were right, you know. I don't have the 'belly' for whatever it is that you're thinking."

"I do."

Kagome laughed sneeringly between her teeth. "Oh, I know. And you know what else?" I breathed lightly. Any harder and our lips would touch. "I don't think you'd even enjoy it. No… you'd do it for villainy's sake, because you're such a bastard." What poor self-awareness. And I'd enjoy it, just not for the reasons she thought. It was complicated. "You probably think that's the worst thing anyone could ever do to a woman, don't you?" Sometimes silence is loud. "I knew there would be sexism, you being what you are, but unimaginative? Sesshomaru, I'm disappointed. Quite frankly you're boring me to bed."

"Apologies, Miko."

She became serious suddenly. "Have you ever done it?"

"That? Never. Although," I added, smiling darkly in her face, "I'd love to violate you someday. One cannot express the satisfaction I'd take from it. It's the sweetest dream, really, only because I know how profoundly disturbing it is not to be in control of one's own body."

"Well, in any case, I'm not like you. Not in that way." Yet she continued to undress me, slow and gentle, until my kimono hung open and my armor lay beside me on the floor.

"Why state the obvious?"

"Because Sesshomaru, I'm not that way because I don't have to be."

Then, it dawned on me—and I just saw red.

"If you think I would _ever_ beg you for…" My voice became the harshest, most savage, animal-like sound that ever came out of me. "As if I give a shit about your cunt."

Kagome sat on her heels, her shoulders shaking with quiet laughter. "Who said anything about that? If there's nothing to care about, there's nothing to care about. I won't make you is all I'm saying. Now," she concluded, taking my hand, "stop making that face and come lie down next to me."

* * *

**A/N: **Well, that was the most fun I had in a long time while editing a chapter. My favorite part was Sesshomaru griping about demonesses.


	7. Chapter 7

And that's how it was for weeks and weeks. We traveled. We searched. We slept under the stars; in houses, huts, and shrines. But no matter where we slept, each night Kagome pulled me into the oblivion of her body. Sometimes I dreamt. More often I was wide awake in torment. She seemed very happy to have her arms around me, embracing me like a lover. Imagine seething while set to burst. Delicate fingers curving over my ribs, my stomach drawing tight under the weight of her hand; and me lying there, waiting without breathing, surrounded by her and half out of my mind. She'd talk to me in the dark. Little conversations about this and that and nothing at all. I avoided speaking when I could, fearing the halting tone in my voice would lead her to suspect that she affected me-and that my cock was pushing against silk.

I started to take my own pleasure. Not all the time. Sometimes in the forest while hunting what she liked. Always during her nightmares. I adored her haunted expression, her writhing and the sweat. My wrist was like a whip. It was the thrill of her waking, watching her toss and turn in secret like some deviant that heightened it for me. But her twisted face wasn't nearly enough. She deserved pain, for using me as her bed warmer—and for forcing to me endure the indignity of lying in my own fuck, if nothing else. Otherwise I was pleased with myself for resisting her, until the afterglow of my release faded and disgust swept me like a wave. I felt empty, forlorn and damned outside of these moments.

Morning.

I stepped out of the shrine and, under the torri's arch, breathed in deeply. Dare I say mountain cats are elusive as foxes. Neither hide nor hair of them anywhere. And tracking at night didn't matter because in the dark nothing is sharper than a cat's eye. They see you well before you smell them.

"If only there was a scent," I said when Kagome stood under the arch. We paused face to face. "They must be hiding behind a barrier."

"You think so?" she asked.

It was the only explanation. My nose was keen and she was adamant the shards were here in the mountains.

But with no leads and a humble questioning in my eyes, she placed three coins in my hand and sent me on one of my usual endeavors, leaving me to ponder my hopelessness in seclusion.

East of the shrine lives a human Lord who grows wild grapes for _medicinal_ wines.

I roamed through the connecting gardens and fields of his wealthy estate, screaming silently all the way. He also produced Opium. It's a wonderful plant in that it distracts from the feeling of grief being suffered. Good for me. Apathy and pent up heat ride the same nerves that give the sensation of heartache. Kagome is hurting too. We pour wine down our throats on most nights. And this Lord does make most excellent wine. Four or five saucers are all I need to feel my liver through my clothing.

**OoOoOoOoO**

Kit watching. I loathed to do it.

Keeping strict guard of him was a bore on most days but not today. He was flopping around in the dirt, trying in vain to mutilate a piglet—he declined what I caught this evening. Told me he wanted to do it himself. But he couldn't possibly hope to eat hunting like that. It was so ridiculous it almost upset my face.

_"Oof!"_

There went his dinner, running away with hardly a scratch and leaving him coughing in a cloud of dirt.

What is Kagome's thought process with him? He should be killing by now.

I cannot say she deluded herself into entertaining a ludicrous parody of demon motherhood, but it did seem she wished to keep him a child-fox longer than normal. Odd, because in his face gleamed two fully aware adolescent eyes. "_Shippo_," she'd coo sweetly to him. Often after he asked a question she didn't wish to answer—and often while she and I whispered to each other in the dark.

"Kit," I said, "if you cannot be powerful be quick."

"What?" from him.

"Precision." We didn't look directly at each other, not in the eyes anyway. Yet he was all ears waiting for me to talk again. "Aim for the heart and lungs. Between and third and fourth rib."

"Y-you're serious?"

"Yes."

"Oh." He turned from me. Then he turned back. "But you're talking to me. You didn't use to do that. Talk."

"Even so, I should think you'd be foolish not to listen."

Sighing, he sat beside me on the ground. Not too close. "What does it matter? he griped. "I'm too weak."

"So is your prey," I countered.

"But I'm not... I can't..."

Gods this whining.

"Get it out. You can't what."

"Feed myself."

"Nonsense," I said. "Your claws can cut open a piglet."

He studied his hands for a moment, then stuffed them into his sleeves.

"That's easy for you to say—with those talons you've got."

"All the more reason for yours to be especially sharp." Now he hung his head. Pitiful. Young spirits shouldn't be discouraged so easily. True his strengths lie in magic, but he had potential. Nothing had been taught to him, that's all. "The belly then."

"Go for the belly?" he wondered, wide-eyed.

"Smart kit." I watched him inch closer, his stare nudging me with open curiosity. My advice was rarely given, and just like that I found myself acting as a mentor of sorts. "... though you risk ruining the liver that way. But such a wound would result in immediate death."

"No kidding? And here I thought you hated me."

Scratching my neck: "Hate is too strong a word." I pulled a dark strand of hair from my collar. Kagome liked to sleep in the empty space where one arm should be. But no arm. "I don't think about you at all."

"Okay, but you're talking to me, telling me about hunting. How come?"

"You're the sorriest thing." His face contorted. "One hates to see it."

"You ever get the feeling that you're being lied to?" he asked quickly, first looking around before speaking. "I do sometimes."

"Who's lying?"

"Not you," he replied.

This earned him my honest consideration.

"Then you should know a demon raised by humans can only hope to live a tragic life."

Confusion coming from him. "I don't get you," he said.

"You will live tensely with humans, never to know a moment's security. And among your kind," I went on, "in rank you will be near the bottom, the disdain of every fox against you."

"That can't be true."

"Oh, but it is," I said. "You were born with many tricks and quickness of body. Magic that even I cannot begin to understand. And how have you wasted these gifts? By being helpless and complacent." I glanced at him and he looked away. He continued to only breathe deeply. "You can smell a lie. Lately it smells like citrus and rose oil. Nod, because I know you smell it too."

He nodded.

"The Miko wants you to forget," I said after a while. "Yours is a most cunning profession. The business of butchery and deceit. Think on that, kit, when she tells you how to live as a demon. She will die long before you become your true self, and if you plan on growing another tail you will forget her humanity and learn to melt into the forest like the fox who cursed me, and to kill."

He tried to blink it away but I saw it. The awe and panic that washes over a young mind when exposed to an adult's perspective, when moments before everything seemed so simple. He struggled with it.

"But I love Kagome."

"So love her," I said, scoffing. "I don't say that you can't. Play up to her if you will. Kill in secret, but _do it_. You must learn to be what you are." I paused for a moment. "The Miko knows who she is. She is learning. She trains daily."

He was waiting for me to continue but I was finished.

"Can I ask you something?"

"I'll allow it."

"That day in the forest... would you have done it? Kill me if Kagome wasn't there?"

"No," I said.

"Really?" He appeared genuinely surprised. "Because I thought—"

"No, I told you." I looked at him. "I am not so morally awful."

"Not to us little guys anyway." Quiet between us. I could feel his question coming when it made its prying intrusion: "Why?"

"Because I like to do it," I said. And the immediate silence that followed made the viciousness of my truth that more explicit. I gave him a moment. "Kit—"

"I'm fine," he managed. There was a very long pause. "I'm a demon too, you know."

"Indeed you are."

"Just not an evil one," he said accusingly.

"I am neither good or bad." I lie. I'm a complete bastard. "What you call evil are traits that were given to me by Gods, and it would irritate them were I to resist them." He made a face. "Meaning, if nature gave me bad instincts it is because they were necessary for me. Not evil."

—or some such shit.

Better to leave a fingerprint on his innocence than a gaping wound.

All that behind us, no more words for a while. We sat in a silent yet comfortable understanding which could never include Kagome.

Waiting. Waiting.

Finally, a stick gave way under a hoof. We snapped to it. Staring. Listening. Not a step escaped us. I was relieved because there's no teaching this and no hope for him if I had to try.

Hushed, I went into detail describing what was about to happen, that killing should be secondary in his mind; evading tusks being primary.

The kit started to stalk.

He stopped.

"What if I can't get at the belly?" he whispered. "What then?"

"Tear into the haunches," I whispered back. "You're small so move all the time. It will turn to fight—you won't be there, but cutting and leaping lightly away."

His expression slipped into something resembling malice, though not at all. And he wasn't nearly as fox-footed as he should have been. Too much noise. Of course, that would come much later—staring straight ahead while instinctively knowing where to step without a sound. I fly when it suits me, but stalk for the days when flying might not be possible.

I realized now that perhaps my speech made him a little overzealous. By all accounts, a yearling boar is a giant compared to a kit.

But when he glanced over his shoulder I whispered for him to go on, confident that I might see something amusing.

He took off like a shot and that was when the noise began. The squealing rose in terror, filling the evening sky as it spread over the clearing, over the stream, even into the mountains beyond. A bloodcurdling squeal that would not cease. There is nothing more wonderfully violent than death by canine. It becomes a gruesome, drawn-out thing if one is too large to die quickly—or if the killer is a novice.

When the kit screamed I felt a dire need to stand up fast. By Kagome's instruction, my object was to keep him from harm, and in the time it took to blink I was grabbing the boar and hurling it across the grass and into the nearest tree.

I plucked the kit from the dirt, inspecting him. Fine. A split claw and cuts that would heal in less than a day.

But he was so upset.

"I did what you said!"

"Like hell." I held him higher. "When I see hurt coming I move. You saw hurt coming and you stayed. I told you, _"Move all the time."_

"Oh move this!" he growled.

Redirected frustration.

And that's all very well but I started to shake him. Not too hard, hard enough to snatch the growl out of his throat, and to unhook his claws from my skin. "Am I mistaken," I said, "or are you baring your teeth at me with ill intent?" Young ones become habitual line crossers when not taught otherwise. A firm line was then established. Disrespect would surely get him killed, even if I couldn't—wouldn't. Yes... in this regard I had more patience than most demons. Believe me when I say the Miko and the curse had nothing to do with it. In truth, it was a quality inherited from my father when most of what coursed through me were my mother. I knew nothing about it until then.

It was a surprise to us both.

In any case, he apologized and I set him down gently.

I walked away, the kit clinging onto the tail end of my fur. Nostalgic though somewhat irritating. But there never was a kit as well protected as this one. _Never._ The mountain cat who, I presume, had been attracted to the sound of a struggle certainly knew this.

Nutty like dried rice. Earth and dust. A cliff with many rocks to trip over—that's what he smelled like. And that's all I needed.

The kit started to talk.

"Stop that," I told him, looking around when he shut up. It was hard to tell the direction from which the trace scent came, and now wasn't the time to listen to his growing pains.

Gone.

_A barrier. _

_I knew it._

If we had settled across the stream the scent wouldn't have reached me. All I could think about was how pleased the Miko would be with this news. I'd have knelt in every way if she were here, delighted in restoring her faith in my ability to, "Do the thing my kind does so well."

**OoOoOoOoO**

But Kagome was not pleased, not after seeing a bloodied child-fox she wasn't. In the shrine she fretted over him, turning him this way and that. Maddening, because he was _fine, _and I thought knowing where to find such a dust-covered cat deserved some kind of praise. High praise, even.

"Why don't you go play, Shippo? I think the other kids are catching fireflies." She turned to me when he bolted out the door on all fours, so focused and upset. "Hunting lessons?"

"Exactly that."

"Shippo's too young for that."

"He didn't think so," I said.

Kagome crossed her arms.

"You're moved by what a child thinks now?"

"Well, he does think you're a liar,"—more than a mild reaction from her, "and I find myself in agreement with him."

It seemed when I cursed or called her every kind of bitch there was, it amused her.

Being called a liar irked her terribly.

Waiting for her ire, and for her to ask what was discussed while she was gone scrubbing herself well past clean. For some unknown reason, I wanted her to give me that low, throaty voice full of suggestion and threat, the voice that made me curl up inside myself and die at night. But none of that. Instead, she smiled in the sweetest way. Then she took my chin, her warm, tasteless breath against my skin, and kissed me on the cheek—then on the mouth. I gave a little moan in my swoon. The kiss was sensual. And my heart was not entirely comfortable with the sensuality.

"Why does he think I'm a liar? What did he tell you?"

"That—" strained tone of voice, "you lie. You want to keep him a child forever."

She chuckled. "Shippo certainly is cute, isn't he?" Like I could answer such a question. "I don't pretend to know a demon's… inclinations. What would I know about that? I know I'm all he's got."

Her promises playing through my mind—

"_I won't make you..."_

"To be honest I had hoped… because only a practiced and accomplished demon such as yourself can help—"

"_I'm not that way..."_

Liar.

The damned, contemptible liar. Liar I'll never forgive until the end of this curse. Ah, but that she could taste like that. I stared at her face for a long time. The anxiety building in me was absolutely visceral. She must be seeing something other than the glare she loved so much. She had a wistful look about her. I might not survive this intimacy much longer. Kagome was the source of my anguish and my only relief, my only outlet.

_Fuck. _

I turned. Tossed my hair turning all the way from the girl who swore not to violate but did, and without the faintest regard for my feelings, however scathing they were.

"Just keep him safe," she said. Agony coming from me. Suffering. "I trust you. Funny, because Inuyasha hadn't taught him a thing."

"Is that why," I started, voice cracking, "why you're so alone? You used to travel in a group. Even without Inuyasha and the kit there were two more."

"You care about that?"

"You know that's beside the point."

"I know," she said. "It's just a severely long story, and it hurts. I need to drink to tell it."

_I'll need wine to listen. _

* * *

**A/N: **This chapter took way too long to edit. I kept messing with it. Moving this sentence there, cutting this and that. I got tired of looking at it after a while. But hey, character development and some creep perv shit from Sess. That's alright with me.


	8. Chapter 8

It was still night when we left the shrine house.

I guided Kagome through the dark undergrowth of the forest, seeing perfectly and smelling better than I could see. If any cat demons were looking for trouble they would surely find it. And they didn't need to look very far—not that any leopard bastard would leap from the rocks to perish on my claws. All they needed to do was wait. Touch their throats one last time. I've stood over all manner of panther and wildcat, conjurers and beasts alike.

We were divinely alone. Demon and Miko slipping through the trees, side by side. I stole glances at her. Her eyes were wide and dilated and constantly moving. In them were many emotions, and I felt everything her face wanted to express, even that which she did not. But I'm not keen on expressing myself in new ways, and anger is the easiest emotion after all. I suppose desire is too, though—like the former, for instance, when backed up neither comes out right.

Like my rage that had been, in its entirety, directed at her from day one, now mirrored at any who would dare cross us as we neared a stream at the base of the target mountain. It struck me in my staring at her,—and I stared for a long time since I was certain the cloud cover had dimmed the gleam in my eyes—that I was suddenly forced into the position of a jealous protector. Another disconcerting thing was that she never explicitly demanded this of me.

I was grateful Kagome could see little more than silhouettes and not my face.

Had I ever thought to do such a thing, even once? Did I not loathe scraping to her just weeks ago—practically radiating acid, swearing to hate cooperation and never to be seen resorting to it willingly?

And why _should_ I resist this instinct? I never asked myself the question. Not until her hand caught my empty sleeve. From that moment I knew only the instinct and lost myself in the suggestion of it, conscious of the fact that only by embracing it would I ensure its gratification.

If only the rest of me weren't so unfulfilled.

And it's so much more than grappling with a nagging love of flesh, or any other simple passion. It's when she talks at me rather than with me, when her questions must be answered while mine are scorned. It's the frustration waxing hot—hotter than blood-heat—in every vein, the sadness and the sitting still, all the time crushed inside a body a hundred sizes too small—all wrong! Use me properly at least. If this continues, at this rate she'll have me weak in each muscle and joint by winter.

In any case, Kagome will have her way. And perhaps, if she has her way enough, I'll come to her with a proposition.

Until that moment arrives.

All was still by the stream.

I stared across it, sharp-eyed and wide-eared. Kagome beside me. For a little while she remained, peering and listening as I was. Then, and without a word, she moved and submerged herself in the water, clothing and all.

Her head broke through the surface, and to my complete astonishment, everything but the sight and sound of her started to fade.

"How," I said.

"It's a spell. Doesn't work right unless I'm clean." She continued to wash, unaware of how strongly I sensed her ambivalence and how badly it offended. "I'm concealing myself so you can do your work."

_My work, she says._

Kagome, hock-deep in the water, hid in plain sight. She was wringing out her hair and I was watching her in a kind of dumb awe, caught in an awkward self-consciousness caused by the growing separation between us, and the curse which hated being apart from its main attachment in any way. I forgot she made life a misery for me as more of her waned, leaving no aura for my own to slide and revolt against. Most of all it was a Miko's essence and not the scent of _citrus _that in despair I strained to pick up. Unsettling how much I've grown accustomed to it. And certainly there isn't a description with exactly the nuance of what reiki smells like, but surrounding it with words that would help one understand its unique subtlety, I'd say it's purer than the clearest waters, or like a sneeze that won't come.

She trudged out of the water, her arrows rattling softly in her quiver, the exact moment my head snapped to the crags as though a strong hand had grasped and yanked it.

There, behind the abrupt presence of many, was the aura of an altogether deadlier affair. A demon cat so terrible that, beyond the edge of a mystic sword, it must be met without wasting time on preliminaries like snarling and bristling, but with jaws outstretched.

"Miko…"

"I know."

"What aren't you saying?" I demanded to know. "Granted we are both uncomfortably sober—"

"This again." In the moonlight she glanced at me sidelong. "Not now. The shards are being defiled," she said, a little short, and with a final toss of wet hair. "Let's hurry."

Pushing my tongue against fangs as my legs pumped to her command. For her to dismiss me after I pressed so earnestly was not only absurd but vicious. "Are you aware of what you ask?" She stopped short and whirled. "My blood will flow for you, perhaps freely, and you don't even have the decency to tell me why."

"Now who can do that?" She was incredulous and I never told her it was Tamamae who managed to tear my scalp loose. "Surely you can chase a cat up a tree, or up a mountainside."

"With the _completest_ abandon I could."

"Sesshomaru… I had no idea you were so passionate. With abandon you say? How long do you suppose that is? Hours I'm sure. I bet you have stamina for days."

Hers is the most dangerous sort of flattery. It makes one question his own sanity. She says the things a male wants to hear if he's to stretch out his neck, in ways that may very effectively motivate him to what lay in wait behind barriers. Also irritated by her sensuous tone of voice. And her expression. The trouble with her face was that it was beginning to ruin me for other faces, _and _that sex wasn't the thing. It can never be the thing for a delicate tease, or sadist—which is precisely what she is, the sort of tormentor to slip breasts under your hand when you're doing your best to find the cleft between her legs.

The transition back to my senses was immediate and permanent, because the mountain watched. The mountain was watching with gleaming eyes of green and there I was trying to find the truth in that exasperating bitch.

"Should I be worried?" she wondered.

"Absolutely not. Not for that slender reason." The question hurt me so much it put a wildness in my speech that had no business being there. "My _'work,'_ as you have called it is my passion. And I will have no other if you would just talk to me." Her heart was a dungeon. She turned from me, gazing into all those leering slits, some blinking from the darkest crevices, some grinning with teeth cruelly yellow about the gums. If only they would be so good to hone their claws one minute longer. "Miko, I swear—"

"Oh, what do you swear, Sesshomaru? Tell me that. You want me to believe you've been touched in the chest and that you care somehow now? You," she started with a laugh that had no humor in it, "the one who wants to kill me, the very one who dreams of the day then goes and abuses himself at night with the thought? Don't look away now. Of course I know. There's no mistaking that smell."

"While on the subject of scents," I said, gliding smooth past _that_. I had no idea she was aware of my secret... operations, and I also had no desire to dwell on the subject. "You do not conceal yours for my sake, or for any work of mine for that matter."

I thought it strange that someone as determined as she struggled with this. I only wanted the specifics, a history free from any emotional demonstration. It might be that her story is worse than being abandoned for her dead lookalike. I suspected it was. In the eyes... Always in the eyes accompanied by sighing in the throat.

"I've had a lot of shards stolen from me," she said softly, "before..."

_Before me. _

"Go on," I urged with equal softness. "Just know that, if Kagome wishes it, she may walk boldly down any path, carrying on her any scent she sees fit to wear."

Hearing her name, her brows drew together thoughtfully. "Your timing's no good." She sighed again. "Asking this before a fight."

"Stalling," I drawled.

"Inuyasha stole them. He took every shard I had."

"He's still on becoming a full-fledged demon?"

"You'd think that but no. Dead women can't have children I guess. Something—I just assume, I don't know. The reason doesn't matter."

"So," I said slowly, "put another way, we are not the only demon and Miko pair after the shards."

"No." Her voice was so tight, and she looked like she'd just been slapped. "We're not." Needless to say, my imagination all but outpaced my thoughts. Both the half-breed and his ghoul were potential prey if the shards were truly her object. But could she really? I doubt they would peacefully hand them over, and I myself, having no need of reasons in order to hunt my brother, were the decision mine after such betrayal, I'd have done it already, and it wouldn't have taken me years of wandering to do it. "I have my pieces," Kagome went on. "Kikyo and Inuyasha have most of them. And the few remaining, most are possessed by truly terrible demons—like that one over there."

"What makes you so sure?"

"What?"

Kagome balled her hands into fists. She was getting impatient.

"That, that demon is so terrible."

"Those shards weren't purified by _me_. They had been, but that was a long time ago."

Meaning this cat _was_ so terrible in that it managed to shrug off father's fang and sacred arrows. Stole the shards from the one who stole them first.

Shot for shot, Kagome couldn't dream of matching the dead Miko's power. But I knew for a fact that Inuyasha had yet to unlock all of Tessaiga's destructive wonders. I'd wager that wielded by him there is more parity between the sword and my own biting fangs than there ought to be.

"Well, I hope you do not expect sympathy. I can offer only my sincerest anger."

"That's what I don't understand. Why are you angry?"

"Because you are."

A great cry rose around us, a chorus of shrieks best described as a hundred screaming women being murdered at the same time.

Kagome changed hearing this, seeming more determined than ever. "Oh I'm _right _angry." She tore away from the movement sliding expertly down the rocks and settled her fiery eyes on me. "And now you know. Some of it at least. So what are you going to do about it? Show me—I want to see."

So I gave her something to see. Revealed my true form to her. For a moment she stood thus, mesmerized by me, by me transformed. She stared as if I was the greatest thing. I believed her. Never had she openly admired me, and I could all but swell under such admiration, even if it were conditional. See, this was evidence of what I could do for her.

"Down," she cracked out.

And no sooner did I hear her command, so strong in conviction, I lowered my bulk to the ground. Anything but dignified. But this tail lowers for no one and for no will, and I managed to maintain a dignity that was almost proud as Kagome mounted me. She shifted so that her weight beared on the base of my neck, where the trunk comes out the shoulder. Then commenced something wonderful, only for us it was infinitely more intimate. "Two shards," she whispered into white fur, touching and fondling with hands against the grain. I doted on her. We doted on each other, for these were so many encouragements: become a butcher, cut steaks from their bodies, smear your muzzle to the eyes in blood, leave them in fragments, in greasy stains under your feet; rip, rend, destroy, and everything short of sodomy.

—a far cry from that night in the swamps with the ogre. If I could see her eyes I suspected there wouldn't be any light in them.

More she stroked, and with such high art that I began to growl, very quietly, deep in my trachea. The rumbling rose with each pass of these forward-pushing movements of hers, dying down and rising anew.

And now sufficiently agitated, my growling cut abruptly into a snarl, and I could snarl more savagely than any group of cat could ever hope to hiss and spit. With lips wrinkled back, fangs bared and dripping, tongue whipping out and whipping back in again, I inspired a pause on the entire mountain.

"Cowards!" Kagome shouted after them. "Hurry—run, you devil! Before it closes."

I broke off into a canter, allowing precious cargo to adjust, which she had and rather quickly, holding hair firmly in her hands. Then into a trot, and tighter still she gripped as I galloped in full stride, streaming forward fast enough to steal her breath.

With a great lunge, five lengths of me nose to tail, I shouldered myself into the barrier and was soundly stopped. But it would give. My body contracted jointly in the pressure as my feet scratched for purchase, leaving on the rocks deep scarring groves. Kagome encouraged me long and ardently, and after tremendous effort, got my head in on the other side, tongue lolling out. Judging by their shuddering horror, I reckon I looked like some crazed rogue breaking out of hell. Every cat, and I mean every cat sprang themselves loose, kicking up gravel and dust in their mortal retreat.

I couldn't let some pass. I snatched the one nearest to my mouth and tossed him down my throat, then went about my work.

* * *

**A/N: **Whew! The dark intimacy between these two is something else!


	9. Chapter 9

**This is a violent chapter. **

**OoOoOoOoO**

Few escaped me.

I ran amok among them, gashed in passing and tramped on their corpses. Kagome did not intervene in the violence she inspired. Rather she was nearly thrown, holding onto me with all that she was worth. But I kept tearing throats. I had always been cruel in killing, that was certain, but in this slaughter seemed a vaster cruelty.

Malice filled my soul, swelled with it, boiled over it entirely. Something snapped, leaving a vacancy where intelligence had been. All cunning was gone, as though I had no brain. Quite frankly I was to all intents crazed. They were bodies upon which to wreck my frustration and wrath, and I was a lacerating flash of teeth and fur in constant motion.

At the height of my mania, a voice reflected in my skull like a thousand mirrors. Intelligence returned, and the heavy tread that stopped was my own.

Standing there, mouth panting wide, salivating like some lunatic. In great quantities the smell of blood overwhelms the senses, and coated from the muzzle on down I raised my head and let loose a sound without my will; a terrible, primitive cry that was all excitement and hate.

But there were slighter sounds—a flutter of silken sleeves, a shifting of weight. "Now, Sesshomaru," Kagome said, her grip loosening without letting go. I felt her lean forward, then gather in her arms as much of my broad neck as she could.

She needed me to calm down. She told me so in one ear, speaking with every pacifying charm of which she was a true mistress. There was no tautness in her voice, no horror. But she must see it. The moon was bright on the rocks, where the cats lay in mangled heaps, dismembered, chewed all to hell. There were also those who had been melted but perished with body parts intact. At my feet, a spread of bodies and one still in the process of dying. He had been disemboweled.

Perhaps she didn't look, or perhaps my aura dominating in the absence of hers allowed her to detach herself from the gore, and her sensitivities. They suffered. She once said that she hated suffering.

Yet she praised me in spite of this, in a tone that was heated and low, with passion that was feverish and burning.

Part of me wanted to believe her. Other parts knew better.

Her words mean so little. They mean nothing.

Kagome can say what she will, but I know to her I'm little more than a thing to manipulate—a _safe _body to explore and exploit. This was confirmation that she could hurl me into insanity if she wished it so. I must be sick. She worked me into an angry lather, had rendered me near inconsolable and I didn't care. For reasons bordering on a perverse nature, I could not have cared less. I stood bloodied and pleased all the same while, behind me, a certain extremity would not keep still.

Our bond tightened into a grip, and it seemed my heart would pump out of my chest so tight was my throat vibrating with suppressed eagerness. But in my right mind, I dared not utter my sentiments—we no longer shared the common tongue. And as much as my whining might have thrilled her, as much as delighting her might thrill me, more I feared to learn what such a whine would sound like.

The life had not gone out of our dying cat yet. He kept his groans to a respectable volume, discreet enough to not interrupt what was otherwise a touching moment—until Kagome put an arrow through his skull and told me to go on.

**OoOoOoOoO**

By now the sky was beginning to dawn.

The top of the mountain was desolate and flat, stretching off a great distance to the east. My gait was that of a courser, smooth, tireless, and we covered much ground until reaching an open rim. Something large used this entrance often. It was fairly wide, deep at the bottom, with fur shreds and claw marks along the edge.

With measured bounds, I started picking my way down the rocks, so as to not plunge Kagome's stomach into sickness.

Scarce wind blew down there. The air was motionless.

We did not fly. To summon power is to advertise it, so she rode me on the ground, had me dragging one paw after the other. The search was a collaborative effort, with her _feeling_ for the jewel and myself trying to isolate fresh scents from old.

"This is odd," she announced. I was following a claw-worn trail forged by one set of footprints, thinking this path is strange in that there were absolutely no other scents. It was as if the other cats were forbidden from stepping foot here. "Keep your ears pricked. I swear I can sense the shards around here somewhere."

Long strides carried us further. As we neared the edge of the path where it began to veer into a bend, there came a sensation that was so unfamiliar to me that it bristled every hair from neck to tail. I detected something, and not by the main senses alone, but by some cryptic and remoter sense. On the periphery of my vision was a shadow, or so I thought. I froze and, looking up the cliff, instantly met the wide-open stare of a leopard demon, its forearms bent as though it'd arrested mid-step.

I sprang clear.

To think a soft-footed cat had nearly succeeded in catching me unawares.

And it turned out our feline wasn't a leopard, but a leopardess.

"Let me down," Kagome demanded, her words resounding off the crags.

At the sight of a human, the leopardess crept slowly down her perch, and just as slowly sank into a crouching position. She was shorter than me, but immensely robust, deep in the chest. Erecting barriers was the extent of her otherworldly abilities. The opposite of Tamamae in virtually every way. This was a demoness who fought by claw and fang, without an ounce of extra flesh, with most of her weight in the bones and muscles.

"A priestess and a demon dog," said the leopardess in a clotted voice. Her mouth didn't move as she spoke; the words seemed to emanate from within her throat. "Tell me, is there another pair behind you?"

Kagome held up her hand, halting me. I raged behind it. "Not to my knowledge," she said.

"You've orchestrated a grave thing, yet you stand before me without fear. Do you know who I am?"

"I've pored over books and scrolls," answered Kagome. "Talked to people, listened to their stories. You go by many names, Ryougura, but the most common one is 'man-eater.' So thinning your numbers to a handful wasn't a grave thing. In fact, one could say I did the surrounding villages a favor."

A coldness crept into me. Kagome has no idea of the danger, yet she insists on speaking with it, progressing toward it—a demoness with nine lives to kill. Cats are honest as cowards are honest. This one betrayed her intent by averting her gaze and flicking her thick tail back and forth. A subtle change lost entirely on a human. But to keener beings it was a clear accession of irritation.

"For what have you come here for? You wish for my life too? Is that it?"

"You have sacred jewel shards—two in your face. I'm here to collect them."

"You?" sneered Ryougura, lifting her great head. "With all the spiritual power of an ordinary mortal? Or rather... him… The one who wasted the life of those whose veins carried my blood."

"More accurately, yes."

"Such _faith_ you have in your companion. You should know the last priestess felt similarly about hers as well. At least she was just to feel that way—her's wasn't a gimp."

And mine wouldn't have me insulted, as that was a right she reserved for herself. "If he's a cripple then neither of us knows about it."

"Do forgive me, priestess. Hearing someone boast about another's power as though it was their own is awfully amusing, if not telling."

To this Kagome glanced at me. Her look of concentration was like mine, so intense was it, so fixed. "It might as well be," she said, turning back. "But never mind. That other priestess—what happened to them?"

"They escaped, unfortunately. And I'm full of regret." But there was a wistful note in Ryougura's deep voice. "However, I do take solace in one thing. Do you see my paw here, the missing claw? Whenever I look at it I don't think about the one who cut it off, but where I left it before it was severed."

"Where you... left it?"

"I blinded him—the white-haired one." Kagome visibly straightened. "But only in one eye, sadly," Ryougura continued. Then her head snapped to me. "Perhaps I'll transform yours into a eunuch."

I snarled terribly. Dripping from my jaws was saliva so potent that it dissolved the rocks and minerals at my feet into hard glass.

Mindful of the rising cloud of miasma, Kagome stepped aside, at last out of the way. "You can try," she said.

"I'll do one better," growled Ryougura. "I'll strangle him before your very eyes. Let you live with it. Then what will you do without the one who not only serves but adores?"

"_Adores?" _I thought I knew all the tones of Kagome's voice; each of her fleeting expressions, every movement or shift. The rapture in this one I had never heard. "Wouldn't that be something?"

Something to torture myself with, but later.

The leopardess was advancing in a slow, sideways manner, and we stalked down on each other until a length apart—then we sprang.

I intended to shoulder Ryougura off her claws, throttling her before she could attack or recover from the impact. But she was too dense, her feet too rooted to the earth. In the instances when she did end up on the ground, it was because she put herself there, as it was a cat's custom in battle.

Yet even on her back I still could not penetrate her guard.

Teeth clashed against teeth. Lips were cut. Whenever I struck for the throat my fangs were either countered by hers or clipped empty air. She was too quickly for that, and the swipe I thought I avoided ripped one ear to ribbons, with the next tearing wide my face. These were accidents, these lightning strikes I could not foresee. But more things, most disconcerting things were happening.

Her claws, like meat hooks they were, caught in my skin. And ever dexterous she turned as she leaped off her hindlegs, snatching me off mine in the same movement.

A perfect takedown.

Few were capable of the trick.

The next moment I gained my feet, but in that moment her teeth closed on my neck. It was not a sure grip at first—caught in hair that only served to fill her jaws with a large roll of fur and skin. But she was perilously close to my throat, and round and round I spun, turning and whirling, stopping and reversing, stumbling and falling and rising, even lifting her free from the rocks. There was no shaking this clinging weight—she clung to me as if clutching at life itself.

And how her talons would rip and gash as she bowed her legs, slashing me from shoulder to haunch. But that didn't count. Not at all. Let the claws scratch and slit and grasp for some new hold when it was the jaws that counted most; jaws with canines twice the length of my own, holding steadfast and clogging breath.

Getting little air, less and less with each intake, I collapsed.

I heard my name; Kagome yelling as if ranting about something. I knew she thought of me as some unstoppable force and not one of blood and fighting flesh, but pierce the great vein in my neck and I'll perish like any mortal. She realized this now.

"Get up from there!" she screamed, frantic. And though I tried, the command did not produce what she wanted.

I lay on my side, gasping and hacking, flailing in every limb. With my windpipe clamped shut I could call on no reserve of strength, and more than once I cried out. Not because of pain. In the lust of it all, I was unaffected by it. I cried because everything about me was reduced to a mockery. And more, this was a _stupid_ way to die.

Then Ryougura snarled, and breathing became easier.

With a shudder I sensed a danger more grievous to my life than a suffocating hold, and straining to turn and look, I saw Kagome's blurry image readying an arrow.

The girl has hit trout in rushing water as casually as one reaches to scratch their chin. Accuracy was all she ever had. She embodied it. Despite this knowledge, I did not want to be in her next shot's general direction. It was that disquieting.

Her concealment spell broken, along with her aura came the jewel's. She'd been firing hot and fast. She had only one arrow left, and as she touched for the fletching she stripped off her quiver, tossing it down as though it were hindering her somehow.

Only, what held her back wasn't something that restricted movement.

Taken for half-dead, Ryougura shoved me aside. "Who are you?"

Kagome was silent; focused entirely on the gravity of her endeavor.

The bow creaked to full draw, the string singing in the tension. There was a surge of reiki, then a blinding flash. The arrow was on the way but it never got there. To add to the already dire state of things, it disintegrated along with her bow, leaving her utterly defenseless.

The leopardess sprang like a steel trap, boring down on her. By convulsive efforts I found my feet—only to falter and crumple forward. Again I stood, unable to run a straight line. But I managed to seize Ryougura by the thigh—though scarcely believing I had, just as Kagome screamed a most horrible, blood-curdling shriek.

Enraged, the leopardess turned to retaliate, the exact moment I released what I had and latched onto her face.

Ryougura became wildly alive, and we rolled and thrashed, first her on top and then me, and constantly sending forth ear-splitting roars and snarls. She wasn't keen on the _chewing_ manner of fighting, nor did she have the stamina to endure it. She was panicked, and fur shed left and right. But I need only hold on and breathe. Wait out her riot.

Before long she was spent and gasping. Even her claws had lost their strength, growing weaker by the second. "Leave me!" she screamed. Of course, I did no such thing, and after a crunch she fouled the ground with more than her blood.

She damned me, and my sires and mothers before me, and all of my seed to be born after me down to the remotest descendant. I acknowledged these damnings by snapping my head like a whip, inflicting punishment in my fury for every rip and cut and returning it in double, until what was gripped between my teeth was more gore than face.

I went for the throat, but before I could take hold the acrobatic assassin once again bowed her legs and writhed her body free.

And to the chase with a blissful thrill, we ran right past Kagome who, holding under her hand a long, bleeding gash, yelled, "Don't let her get away!"

Ryougura reached the mountain's edge and jumped, and without hesitation I hurled myself over, catching her leg. We fell fast and hard. Tossed and spinning, plunging and snarling, crashing, breaking—we brought the mountain down.

At the bottom, among the falling rocks, I was first on my feet, and still holding onto her leg.

_Something's wrong with it._

The limb was relaxed even as my fangs scraped against bone.

Her back broken, she could do no more than sheath and unsheath her crooked claws, open and close her mouth. I took hold of her throat and chewed until she lay quite still. Then I sat with the body for a while, panting from sheer exhaustion.

When I stood it was on two legs instead of three. However, with movement came pain. The right leg had the sensation of floating around in its socket, and I couldn't put it firmly on the ground. But Kagome was calling, so I carved the shards out of Ryougura's warm corpse and made the weary, painful climb up the crags.

Kagome was sitting in a puddle of blood. I approached her, limping, and she looked up at the jewel extended before her. My hand was trembling. I could hardly keep my balance. Yet she remained thus, silent, watching me with wide-staring eyes.

"I threw myself off a mountain for you."

"You did so much more than that."

"I did what you asked of me, nothing more."

"No," she protested. "You—"

"Take the fucking shards."

She took them, and as she put them away I dropped down on one knee.

"My god," she said. "Even in suffering—"

"Don't." I didn't want to hear it. "Your shoulder..."

"I stopped the bleeding, but it takes a lot to heal myself. I have nothing left." She touched my face. Her hands were cold. "What… what happened to your armor?"

"When things go wrong it takes a while to regenerate."

"We're in bad shape," she said, sighing. "Glad I let Shippo sleep."

"I can fly you back to him."

"Please."

"But no further," I said. "I'm tired. Dead tired."

**A/N: I have a fascination with toxic relationships. None of this is very healthy, I know. With that said, heads up. Some of you might not like Kagome in the upcoming chapters. **


	10. Chapter 10

**The "kink" tag is working like a part-time job in this chapter. There are some dark undertones that are open to interpretation, but nothing too obscene. Beyond that, it's tastefully written filth. And femdom stuff. **

**OoOoOoOoO**

"You're back!" The kit started talking the instant I staggered into the shrine-house. "I'm starving. What's for breakfast—" He was running towards us when he froze. Color drained from his small face. "What happened? Are you guys okay?"

"Well, we finally got those shards," Kagome said. "And we're fine."

"But you're all tore up."

"Just fine, Shippo. So don't you worry."

I let her down gently, then stole to a lonely corner across the room, where I fell down and would remain down for days.

Kagome moved better than me, but it was a painful search through her bag. "The rosary," she said. "Ugh, what else... I can't think."

"Can I help?" Though the kit wouldn't leave her side, his eyes never strayed from me. His nose wrinkled. He smelled it. He knew why I sought to distance myself from them.

"My little helper." Kagome smiled despite herself. "Incense is what I need. I found the beads, so let's burn some and I'll get started."

The kit was a blur, scrambling, as he were, here and there. In his hurry he dropped the incense holder, spilling ash onto the floor.

Kagome would heal well before me. After a chant and a day's rest, her power will be active and in excess, my own still lethargic and spent. It was the way of things. By its very nature demonic energy is destructive, limited in restorative capability. So long as her heart pumps her spark will never flicker out. She will always have a higher influence to call upon, whereas I can only recover by the virtue of my own life force.

Normally this wouldn't be a problem. But I persevered with every fiber of my being for Kagome, used nearly every ounce of vigor to remain in my true form beyond my limit. Now all that was left was a dark pulse that throbbed weakly, and all of it allotted to stitching my body back together. Wounds no longer bled, but they were slow to close.

The bloodied fur on my shoulder betrayed my true condition. Patches were missing, and it stretched lifeless and matted across the floor. It could not be summoned to move.

What's more damaging, the fall had not only wrenched my leg but shattered it above the knee. And with the excitement of battle having died, the pain was terrible. So I lay very still, swallowing around a sore throat, because if I reached inside layers of silk I might feel something fold open. Or worse, dip a claw into something spongy.

And so it was on the second day, unable to quiet my ragged breath, that the child-fox conspired with Kagome. I opened my eyes to see her crossing the floor with a determined look on her face. She knelt before me as the kit stalked up to my right. My heart hitched a fit.

"Are you sure about this?" he asked her.

"I have to be," she replied. "I've got to do something."

Which meant hurt was coming. Agony.

Has she forgotten? We are eternal enemies with spirits fated to pick each other apart. Reiki is terrible for me. It was never intended to heal demon-kind.

"Go away," I said gravely. "Whatever it is you're thinking, don't."

She offered clear water to drink and it was refused. Then, after washing her hands with soap—which I thought an odd thing, layer by layer she unraveled my torso, spread silk and satin aside. She was very good at this. Tender and neat, and with hardly any new pain.

"So many scratches."

"_Shippo,"_ Kagome swiftly scolded. But when she used a knife to slice open one trouser leg her hand flew to her mouth. "You told me it was sprained."

"Let me be."

She wasn't hearing any of it. "It's dislocated _and _broken."

"Why don't you pick up your knife," I said, touching my chest. "Why not place it here and turn it?"

"This leg is _shorter_ than the other it's so dislodged. Who's to say when it heals it'll heal properly? Is that a risk you're willing to take?" Her hands were glowing now, and every nerve recoiled from the searing tendril that threatened to unfurl and purify me. But there was nowhere to go, no strength left to stand with. Besides, my claws were full with her sleeve. "Your cuts look good, so I'm only going to focus on your leg, okay?"

It was the keenest pain; an indescribable sensation of pressure. Floorboards splintered and cracked as I tore into them, and after a particularly wet and hollow-sounding _pop_, I fainted.

I came out of the faint late into the next day, with the kit eating his supper beside me. He offered his poached eggs and rice, then his trout. All were silently rejected. Kagome set my leg at least, mended every fragment of bone. I was thankful for not being conscious during the latter.

She was watching me from across the room, near the fire pit. Her brows were knitted together. When she treated humans, she not only alleviated their pain but also healed them completely. With demons she was simultaneously omnipotent and powerless. There was little else she could do but watch me drift into a deep, meditative state, and hope. Hope that in her vulnerable position my lingering scent would be sufficient to keep threats at bay.

**OoOoOoOoO**

I awoke a few days later with a heavy heart. Scents had gone stale, and save for the caged hare beside me, the shrine-house was dark and empty. The kit caught it. For freshness, the creature was kept alive and left unharmed.

That's sorted then.

No longer was the kit beneath my notice. I decided then to let him accompany me someday if need be, ensuring that he'd make for a very sorry fox indeed, but a fox more dog-like. At least one certain to walk less softly among demons, that is.

Kagome was far away, and without her best weapon, choosing instead to leave it—me—behind. Did she sense another shard? The urge to go after her was strong, pulling at the bottom of my stomach. Or maybe that was hunger. It was puzzling how my chest could ache through being denied the burden that nearly killed me. But if I'm to go along with this insanity I should embrace it, heart-easy and content.

The sharp throbbing in my leg tried its best to discourage me from standing. With a hitching movement I stood up anyway. Then I fell, and remained where I fell, propping my back against that gods-forsaken wall.

**OoOoOoOoO**

The shoji door slid open two days later, and in walked Kagome with wind-tossed hair. She smelled of a hard-run mare, forests and fields, a hanyou I'd never met. Exhaustion circled her eyes, and her clothes were dirty. I didn't care. Too self-possessed, my expression hardly moved, but I was wild with joy seeing that tired face of hers.

The kit reached me first. "You actually ate it," he said, delighted. "You ate the rabbit I caught for you."

From the hinds up, in fact. Bones and all.

"How do you feel?" Kagome asked.

"Bored. Uncomfortable."

"Your eyes are brighter. Even the tears in your clothes are starting to mend." She paused for a moment. "I've got something for you. But I'll need some time to prepare it."

She immediately got to work; fired the floor pit, then with burning incense went around the place making light, until every lamp was lit. On a low wooden table, she ground foul-smelling herbs into a stone mortar, scraping the paste into a steaming cup.

Finished, she approached, extending the brew towards me. "Here," she said. "This should dull any pain and speed up regeneration."

I turned from her, insulted. I had never taken medicine in all my five-hundred years. And she's no master herbalist. There's no telling what the effects might be. "No thanks."

"But—"

"As you were."

Kagome dropped to her knees, and without spilling a single drop. She spoke tightly through her teeth, her lips hardly moving. "_I bought a horse! _Do you have any idea how far and how long I had to ride to get these herbs for you? My ass is sore and I've hardly slept in days."

The throbbing vein in her head was on the brink of rupture. But so what. "I'd rather suffer than put that slurry to my lips."

"You'd rather… _What!" _Kagome swooped upon me, and the kit covered his eyes. A firm leg for either side, she was sitting atop a tense and tortured lap, where she scolded and yanked, handling me as easily as a male might handle a female—that was the proportion. "I swear, so help me if you don't drink."

So I downed the awful rank, then sulked by the hour as her demeanor progressively lightened. A great burden had been lifted from her—and that was all very well. I didn't appreciate being gathered in like some insolent whelp, that's all.

"Better?" Kagome was climbing into bed when she asked, the kit already snoring beside her.

"Hn."

"You'll die before you admit it's working, huh."

"I will."

The medicine _was _working, and rapidly. Pain was dulled to a vague numbness, and for the first time in days, though faint, I was able to will a shiver down my fur. Instead of lying there draggled and limp, slowly it began to curl around me, its ivory gloss returning just a fraction.

But as the room settled, abruptly I realized that I was being watched—and quite intently—by Kagome from across the room. She sat up and put her hand to her head as humans do when they're bored, or scheming. This stare sent a creeping thrill down my spine. Hers were eyes leering at prey.

But so were mine.

**OoOoOoOoO**

Through the humid days and cooling nights in which the first hint of autumn crept, Kagome swore she'd rather go dirty than bathe one more time in a cold stream. So she generously exchanged her just purchased mare for a bathtub. A glorified bucket, really. Much too small to accommodate my body but perfect for a petite like her.

The shine's door slid off its track all afternoon as she fetched countless buckets of water. She gathered stones to fire in the floor pit, then submerged them one by one. And when the temperature was to her liking, she emptied pouches of wilted lavender into the water, filling the room with its calming scent.

Posted in my corner, I watched as Kagome hid the tub behind a folding screen; listened to her sighs as she sank into the water. She had always been protective of her privacy, if not somewhat modest. So quite the surprise to see her sashaying around with her yukata unsashed and partly open—and without the slightest bit of self-consciousness.

I stared openly and without shame. This is the girl whose throat I once vowed to crush in my claws like a stem. Yet however offensive I thought to imagine wanting her ceased to be the instant it gained the power to arouse. Few things are shameful if it causes an erection, and I had grown very _hot_ with watching her, wanting her to the point of bitterness.

Never in all our time together did I expect exhibitionism from her. She carried on as though unaware of being followed by my steady regard. Warming rice, pouring tea, perusing through scrolls—she was nonchalant, her nakedness completely forgotten. And not so much as a fleeting glance as she sat at the table. My eyes were everywhere, over her breasts, across the soft crease of her belly, descending to the dark gleam of hair between her thighs—a sleek down, that delicate curl—and the taut curve of her calves.

She would ignore me for the rest of the day.

Later, hours after the kit had fallen asleep, there was activity in the night.

Kagome was up and pouring wine by the dying fire. Several times she peered over her shoulder, as though she might at that moment catch me stalking across the floor. She was mortal all the way through alright, even down to her courageous heart. Another sip for resolve, and then, emboldened by the darkness, she walked to the unblinking, predatory stare that was my gaze.

The anticipation in her approach, in bare feet padding lightly on the floorboards.

Focusing on everything at once; her standing before me, and the subtle sway in bearings. Then down onto her knees, spilling wine and crawling through it. Movement on the edge of my vision and back to her with saucer to lips. Drinking of wine down a slender throat and the glistening drop on her chin. "What," I grunted at her.

"Try to understand," she whispered. "You make me shudder. But when I look at you properly you sort of look alike."

Sometimes when she drinks she clogs my ears with nonsense. She has compared me to my brother before. "I'm insulted."

"I know you are. Now about this leg of yours…"

"Nearly healed."

"And you can put weight on it?" she asked. "Move it around?"

_Odd..._

"Sure."

"Don't be arrogant. Remember I fixed it while you were passed out."

"Good thing too. I was beginning to suspect that with humans the dog is mistreated by many."

"Didn't abuse you," she said, suddenly defensive. "I didn't mean for that to happen. But I still healed you. Don't forget it." She had drunk just enough to loosen lips, that was certain. "You'd—hey, watch my drink. Here. What was I saying?"

"You were alluding to the private satisfaction you feel with watching me kill."

Thrust into silence, and into sober thoughts. I suspected this some time ago. Recent events only confirmed it. Yet she rather pretend we aren't in dark company with one another. She was so close, pivoting in her head. "I'm not a saint," she started. "But I'm definitely not like you. I swear I've told you that."

"You might be when you're done with me," I said, treating myself to the rest of her wine. "Did you honestly believe the curse wouldn't come with some… effects? You thought yourself immune to suggestion?"

"Not exactly."

"So you admit it then?" She grabbed the saucer and started to stand up. But a change of heart and she settled back down. The question was stronger than alcohol. "Tell me what it's like for you," I said. "I'm terribly curious."

She stirred a little in uncertainty; glanced behind to where the kit still slept, then back to me with a shrug. "What can I say?"

"That you've never been threatened with an intimacy like ours before."

"Intimacy?" Kagome repeated. "Disturbing's more like it. And why are you smirking? Sometimes when I close my eyes all I can see is teeth ripping and tearing and…" How I wished she'd go on. There's something animal between us that she loathes to admit. She was the one who wanted no cat left alive. It was she who watched with sharp, covetous eyes as I worked to pierce Ryougura with fragments of her own skull. "And why do you want to know anyway? Something to masturbate with later?"

"Though I sit along a spectrum of perversion that might alarm—" _Ah. _I said the quiet part out loud. She went tharn like a doe hearing the snap of a branch underfoot. But she didn't shrink away. Instead, she tilted her head, as if to see my face at a fresh angle. "Miko," I went on, "you misunderstand."

"Then I don't know what you're talking about."

"You're being disingenuous," I said, low and coarse. And she had glimpsed the white fang-teeth not completely bared.

"Really I'm not." She was stroking my fur, which she had been pawing steadily for a few minutes. "Look, I don't know how to answer that. Not in a way that'll satisfy your morbid curiosity. And I didn't come over here to talk about that anyway. I wanted to reward you."

"For…"

"Let's see... for all your _valiant_ suffering. How's that sound?"

I straightened. Her sultry tone went quickly to the blood, as did being licked, tasted and devoured by her eyes. Her proposal sounded fortified with a catch, as though there's some small debauch that must be indulged in first. That's what one half of my brain cautioned. The other half was preoccupied with her mounting arousal, her human smell.

It put a new hardness in my groin. If she were to make herself generally available, I'd slide into any one of her holes, indiscriminately, right here on the shrine floor. "Kagome," I asked, hearing a strange note in my voice, "what exactly are you getting at?"

She inched closer, and in one ear whispered, "What do you think?"

"You want to be fucked."

"Yeah, you would think that."

My confusion was visceral. "What then if not that?"

Kagome got on her knees and forced my back to the wall. "Don't move," she told me, and lower went her head as her mouth descended beneath my jaw. Her warm breath on my throat, the shivering touch of lips on skin; she loosened clothing and spread them open. And now, having exposed my torso to her inquisitive eyes, she brought both hands to lay flat on my chest, then proceeded to fondle lewdly and at length.

Further south was a trail that led to a thatch of white, in which she gleefully sifted through, closing hair in the webs of her fingers. "Soft like fur," she whispered, mostly to herself. "And these stripes… I wonder if they converge..." Over my hips she pulled just enough to free my erection, and, in that awkward arrangement of undress, made an event out of wrapping her hand around it. "Hm. Nothing?"

Though my heart did thunder, I hadn't uttered so much as a sigh. "You thought I'd faint from a mere caress?"

Kagome stopped. I thought she would have been annoyed—not that was my intention. Instead, she looked positively delighted. She even started laughing. "Talk that talk, Sesshomaru," she said, sweeping hair from my brow. "I'll break that haughty pride of yours."

I swallowed hard. "So get on with it."

And with a knowing little smile she did exactly that, experimenting with her technique and grip, until my breathing became more pronounced and I shifted against the wall. From tip to base and back, she stroked with a slow but firm winding motion. It had the effect of tightening my stomach. "So was what Ryougura said true?" she asked, casual as ever.

_Is she for real?_

"What?"

"You adore me?"

"I don't know," I said fast, but without the resonance of truly I do not know, but rather, let it be and don't stop.

"Oh, I think you do." I tried to answer, but every time I spoke she'd grip a little tighter, pump her wrist a little faster. This was definitely intentional, as she did it only to relish in the faltering tone in my voice. So I shut up, bit down a groan and drew one leg—the one she healed—up at the knee. She immediately pushed the leg back down. "Squirm too much," she said, or rather _intoned_. "Tell me something I don't know."

"I want to hold you down." I reached for her, balling her yukata into my fist. "Get this damned cloth up," I rasped. "You should already be naked."

"You," she said, seizing my wrist, "don't get to touch me." She thrust my arm away, then held it to the floor. "And I thought you said you didn't care about it?" There was nothing to say to that. I could only watch as the hand that had restrained me went up and disappeared underneath her clothing. Then I heard it; a sticky little sound that was nearly inaudible. When she withdrew her hand I saw the wet stringing along the index and middle, and that taunting, provocative smile as she sampled it—before she shoved into my startled mouth the fingers she tasted first. "Give a shit about it now?" I bit down, and almost a humming sound, not quite a growl, rattled through my teeth as she moved her wrist around, the gesture jerking my head left to right. I was becoming unreasonable, because all the while she squeezed and stroked progressively faster, until my hips began to rise mechanically off the floor.

Kagome was relentless, and my head was reeling. I abandoned all pretense as pleasure rose at last to grip me, unable to close my mouth. But she let go, and quite suddenly, content to watch the slow, shuddering undulation of chest to hips. "Not yet," she said, moving to rest her head on my shoulder so that we shared the same view. I twitched to her touch. I wanted to finish, but she wanted to stretch it out, stopping as she did. She would edge me to the brink—three times, in fact, and each time I panted like one possessed, never having felt any ecstasy as keen as this, or as frustrating.

Kagome tried for a fourth, letting go at the last moment. But the crisis came and went anyway, and in the end I was sitting there soiled with fuck, gasping and spent and not the least bit satisfied. She ruined it on purpose. "You are a witch," I growled to her smirking face. And to my horror, she took me into her hand once more, told me to repeat what I just said. It was only through grit teeth, and above all with muttered swears and grave threats, that she ceased that torment.

* * *

**A/N:** I just wanted to point out that it's implied that Kagome can control Sesshomaru physically through suggestion rather than raw strength.

Also, I'm currently in the middle of a statewide quarantine. Hope you guys are healthy and safe. As an introvert and a stay at home mom, I feel like I've been training for this moment for years.


	11. Chapter 11

**Oh, boy. Grey morals all around in this. **

**OoOoOoOoO**

How Inuyoukai came into existence is difficult to determine. Tradition describes us as openly malevolent, whereas human myth embodies us as servants of their passion.

It's rumored we came to be through some cruel betrayal, with the most recited tale involving a woman who was so consumed with hatred of her rival, buried her faithful dog so that only its head stuck out of the ground. The exposed head was then encircled with meat, and as the beast suffered to starve to death surrounded by delicacies it couldn't reach, so strong was its resentment for its mistress that before dying its saliva turned toxic. And when the dog's spirit finally materialized, it was not in the form of a curse that sought to destroy the woman's most despised enemy, but instead an intelligent being of flesh and blood who promptly swallowed her whole.

Or so the lore went.

Recalling the tale brought my thoughts back to how all of this got started. With Kagome sitting quietly to my left, I shifted against the large pine tree under which we sat, thinking how Tamamae's curse could be so much more than there being no immediate end to the vixen's scorn.

To be 'cursed to the nature that is the shame of my heritage' is to suffer from human selfishness. I bore witness to an example of this, a few weeks after Kagome and I had left the shrine-house behind to camp in the wild, or wherever we could.

That day we arrived at a fishing village seeking the services of a bowyer. Kagome had already destroyed two bows then—and would unknowingly ruin all subsequent bows thereafter. In any case, the settlement was too small, too poor. No such craftsman resided there. Naturally with a Miko around every cough or broken limb had to be tended to. So as she served the sick I wandered off, much to the relief of the people.

All day I brooded on the edge of the village or roamed restlessly about. The evening bells from the distant temple were a dull ringing in my ears.

I had been sitting on a rock shelf, slipping in and out of my mind, when a man, a hunter it seemed and his lame dog, came out of the brush with a club in his hand, and a few moments later the dog died. Bludgeoned to death by the man it had been forced to ruin its body for.

Though my leg was fully healed, my armor strong and sharp as ever, it remained to be seen whether or not the injury would have a long-lasting impact. I could put weight on it, turn and pivot well enough. The pinch wasn't painful. But it was felt. And while I resented acknowledging it, strange to myself I did learn fear. I feared a broken body through no consent of my own. Most of all, I dreaded sentiments that were previously unformed, if not nascent at best, developing and coming alive with vigor.

My wearied musings were interrupted by movement.

Increasingly it seemed every private moment alone with Kagome was an opportunity for new torment, with the latest being her standing before me without warning. She pulled a ribbon from her sleeve. Was that for me, the long tied hair?

Her eyes slanted down at me, with that veiled indifference I had learned to distrust, and desire. She hadn't brushed so much as her shoulder against me all day. My pulse quickened as she let time pass. I felt her inside my brain. What fresh torture did she have in mind tonight?

Abruptly she pulled at her clothing and exposed herself. With two fingers she parted her folds, offering to scathing eyes a most tender shade of pink. "Why do you insist…" She spread herself further, and what peeped out pushed my tongue at the roof of my mouth, at my fangs.

Kagome had started to sit until she looked down. She then pulled the fur from my shoulder and laid it out, as though she feared to crush her naked ass onto the ground. She arranged herself on it, with her legs spread wide apart, her underlayers and hakama hanging off one ankle. "What face is that?" she asked.

I was watching her in the way a man drinks when he's dying of thirst. Which was when her torturing became even more insufferable.

She started to touch herself, telling me in a low voice exactly what she was doing; described in explicit detail all the things I'd never get to do to her. And all the while circling with her fingers, massaging it, patting it… patting it…

Apparently there was _one _thing I could do.

Unclasping my armor, of my own choice I went down on my knees to seal my mouth to her _lips,_ and to be used by her. She let me do it, watching my face as intensely as I watched hers. There was a trace hint of copper to her taste but no blood. Claws held her open, and soon after she broke the stare first. Her eyes drifting over my head assured me that what I started to do with my tongue was worth continuing.

"You're so good at… Stop for a sec," she said unevenly. "I want to ask you something."

And I wanted to go on smearing my face with her. Drown in it. "What."

"When you transform can you change into a smaller version of yourself?"

My brows drew together. She interrupted me for this. "Of course not," I said. "Don't be ridiculous."

"That's too bad."

I had listened as fast as I could. But there was a delay. With a jolt I realized what she insinuated. "You're fucking with me."

"Of course I am," she said. Then she just laughed, scorching me with it.

There was something in that laugh—and the way she thrust her cunt to my lips that will forever be unforgettable. I was lust-sick. Until then, of such things I hadn't the faintest glimmering. I never thought she would be the one to paint in my imagination new depravity.

Seizing her by the thigh, my tongue quickly located what it sought. Soon she was sighing and flushing crimson, abandoning the grip that yanked at my crown. She shuddered as she came, and I shoved my tongue inside, made it penetrate deep so she could have her last spasm—and so I could swallow it. When she settled, I spent another moment scrutinizing her, staring at the hole stretched a little wider, and couldn't help fixing my lips to her one last time.

"I think next time I'll have you use your fingers," Kagome said, lifting up onto her elbows. She was in solitary bliss, her shining black hair loose in its ribbon. "When you do something about those claws though."

Wiping my mouth with my sleeve: "I rather you use another part of me."

"I could take it or leave it honestly." On watery legs she climbed onto my lap, with her clothing still hanging off one foot. Her arms were wrapped around my neck, buried under a curtain of hair. "I'll let you take care of that yourself. But you better be quick about it."

_Let._

So much for a job well done.

In any case, Kagome was skilled in breaking the haughty, that was undeniable. And only for a moment did I wax and wane between self-loathing and the shattered remnants of my ego.

Shifting beneath her, I quickly pulled out my erection, and she watched just how vigorously my wrist worked in the crowded space between our bodies. I didn't hesitate when she pressed her mouth to mine, pouring myself into the kiss, where then she whispered filth that boiled my blood, her every word dragging at my lips. Not that it took much or very long anyway. Almost immediately I crushed one out onto her sweltering thigh.

We cleaned ourselves with the same cloth, first her and then me, and everything about it mechanical. I'd be fit for anything inside a few minutes, but acted as though my appetite had been satisfied. She wouldn't have lent me her body a second time anyway.

With her lust sated, she decided that being arranged in each other's embrace suited her. She became alive with chatter, telling the full tale of her betrayal, of her home, her alien world she was forced to leave on the other side. I sat listening, holding her as the night stretched cool and tirelessly ahead, the rising moon lighting the bare forest in ghostly day. Her touch was incomplete, distant even as I held her. Listening silently to the impossible story of a Miko the like of which should not exist but did.

I was wrong. It wasn't Inuyasha she missed.

There isn't anything she missed more than her previous life.

**OoOoOoOoO**

"That's all? Hunting boar? Are there not other throats to cut?"

"None here."

"Perhaps some demon to go after from which you will take its jewel shard?"

"What did I just..." Kagome grimaced suddenly. It wasn't because of me, at least I didn't think. She called it a 'period.' "That's all, Sesshomaru. Now go on."

"I'll go with you!"

"No, Shippo, you stay here with me."

"Why?" he wondered from atop my shoulder; and how his tail did droop. "He won't let anything happen. He's the scariest thing out there anyway."

"Next time," Kagome promised him. "Better to let him be moody by himself."

I left her with a look of disgust, making it clear that I would be a very miserable demon indeed if I had to make a habit out of feeding the dregs of human society. Criminals of some Lord's war—who cares! Let them starve if life is so inconvenient. But no, she rather throw herself into charity work, taking on fully the role of a wandering priestess than admit her training was going absolutely nowhere. I preferred her more as a huntress, with all the boldness of a stag in autumn. What happened to that Miko I wonder?

Our travels had led us far from any town or village, at the foot of the northern mountains.

It was their territory. Their boar I hunted. Wolf demons. So a sharp nose to the crisp autumn air, a vigilant gaze to the cliffs and trees. Straining to listen and hearing nothing when there should have been birdsong or other signs of life. Silence. Absolute and ringing audibly in my ears. They observed quietly. Ten or more watching from behind the trees, in the dying forest. Breathing.

Amid the wolves, I stood imperiously in the weak sunshine. A storm was coming. With no further movement to stir me into action, I hoisted the boar and went about my task, killing two more before heading back to where Kagome was.

Crude was the materials out of which the settlement of thugs had been constructed. Ramshackle huts hardly fit for an animal to live in, but the men put up with it.

There was also a distinct lack of women, which is never a good sign. Many surrounded Kagome, as if leering at a living idol, and half of them thin and suffering from some terrible sort of disease that swelled the throat. Most she could heal in a day was three. The more heads I counted the angrier I felt. We would be here for at least five more days.

At first my walking among them went ignored. Then, and almost as a collective, I saw in their sunken faces the exact moment they realized what they were seeing was not a man, merely a pale caricature of one. Humans especially don't like seeing this. I suppose it gives them an uncannily feeling.

Suddenly, all around sounded the ring of swords being drawn, the scrape of shovels as others took to arm themselves with what they could. One would think Kagome would've taken a moment to inform them of her other companion. Dozens huddled together around her, dozens opening their rotted mouths to shout at me.

"Protect the priestess!" the strongest among them yelled. "Raise your weapons, hurry up!"

But I paid no mind to that.

Behind them was a scene that set my brain on fire.

A confused Kagome in the grasp of a man whose hands took one too many liberties with her person. If there had been on my part a misunderstanding I knew nothing about it. Never mind that their aim was to keep her from me. There remains a number of ways to drag away a female without touching her breasts.

It was difficult standing there, privately warred upon and myself waging private war with Kagome's disembodied warning to never harm humans. But possessiveness is a feeling that destroys every other emotion. It was the quality that was the nature of my kind, therefore of myself. So I went to retrieve what was mine, with the carcasses landing on the ground at once.

"The demon throws meat!" someone cried.

It was chaos.

Kagome was pushed aside, the kit thrown from her arms and onto the dirt. And I was unable to tell whether some charged at me or fell towards the boar in desperate hunger. But so instantaneous were my movements, and so closely were the men crowded together, that their weapons clashed with the man beside, with one driving his blade through the shoulder of another.

While the idiots struggled with themselves, with my fur and claws I sent any who got too close to Kagome and the kit flying. I snatched one man in particular, drawing him in. He was the one. From the start the bastard had no shame in holding her too familiarly, so truly it was his behavior that led my thumb-claw to the vein in his neck. The crowd stopped and opened as he screamed. My grip lasted so long he had time to scream himself out, even finding the courage to pull a knife on me.

"You can't!" Kagome gasped. "Everyone stop!" All paused under the dark clouds which were rolling low, and saying nothing but with a shared distrust of glares and heavy breathing. "This is all a huge misunderstanding," she continued. "He's with me."

"_Look at the eyes," _whispered one man. He was almost whimpering. _"Blood red!" _

"And you!" Kagome pointed her finger at me. "What are you nuts? Put him down before you confirm what they already think you are."

I threw the man aside. So easy was it, a simple gesture. "I am what they think I am."

"That's beside the point."

We glowered at one another, bothered for different reasons.

"Miko-sama," coughed the man I had thrown, "what kind are you consortin' with that demon?"

"Come to think I don' like the looks of that woman," someone added.

"Aye," agreed another. "Looks as though she could fight her own battles and her demons' battles too."

"Now wait just a second." This upset Kagome further, because after all, her reputation was most dear to her. Above all else.

"You see?" I told her. "Idiots. You're wasting your time. Heal one today and the sick will return tomorrow."

"This is _my _burden."

"That _we _share," I returned pointedly.

Murmuring from them. Watery eyes blinking in the first gust of the impending storm.

"Keep your voice… _Not so loud._" Kagome looked around, flashed a nervous smile. What the men couldn't feel was her power swirling about her, the warmth of her invisible strength. "I can get another bow," she whispered.

"You'll break that one too," I whispered back. "And without ever figuring out _why._"

Rage flushed her cheeks. She had to unclench her jaw so she could speak. "Come with me," she said.

She led me into one of the huts, so we could argue in private. As if on cue, the storm arrived. The rotting roof, with its thatching worn and frayed let rain through on us.

"What's your problem?" she demanded to know. "I told you I'll figure it out on my own. If I just keep training—"

"Listen to reason," I all but growled. "If I'm allowed to say no to you—then no, Kagome. Your stubbornness is why our search for the shards has come to a halt."

"It's not that. I can shoot regular arrows just fine."

"You don't have an arrow for every man here," I muttered under my breath.

"What's that supposed to mean?" She crossed her arms. "I have a responsibility to help anyone who needs it. You think I should abandon them? Is that what you think?"

"No,' I said, pure acid. "It's more insulting. I think it's uninteresting. I think we have much bigger problems. Like you stalling with healing the sick and busted bodies of pillagers."

She looked up from the ground. "Pillagers?"

"Come now," I said. "You're a bright girl. _Pillagers_—men who go about tearing through villages, robbing, burning, killing fathers and husbands in order to make it easier for them to put their cocks into a much greater range of women than what was previously permitted."

Kagome stared at me with a stimulated look of shock and anger. I hated her for it. She was saving face. "Whether they are good or bad, I'm obligated. And there are wolves—"

"Good," I said, truly delighted. "Let the wolves have them. I hope they don't even leave a toenail."

Her fists were pale she was balling them so tightly. "Go away, Sesshomaru."

My teeth were suddenly clenched. _"Where."_

"Wherever you like."

"You mean as far as I can."

"Oh, hell—why not!"

As I started moving away from Kagome before I meant to, I threw over my shoulder one last glance, one of those mute appeals a man makes when a noose is tied around his neck. Then I turned right back. "Just so we're clear, you want me to leave you alone with these men, all while wolf _demons _circle the camp as we speak?" I spoke her name flatly, sighing. "I know you're familiar with the eastern pack and their young leader, but is the northern pack familiar with you?"

I wondered if there was still any way to get back in my right mind; doubted it. She didn't answer so I turned to leave for real that time.

"You assume the worst," she said with perfect coolness. "But you can't help yourself, can you? Sesshomaru, none of this…" She paused as if the words became a knot in her throat. "What you're feeling isn't real."

Amazing how she continued to find new ways to say the worst things I have ever heard. I didn't feel passion for her as a lover would. But I felt. What, did she think of me as animal? Was it the quickness with which my eyes followed movement? Am I characterized as '_other' _in her mind? These are not reasons for cognitive dissonance. "Does reducing the complexity of what I am to a simple thing make this easier for you? Does this give satisfaction?"

Quite frankly she was unprepared. She made some upset little noise, as though the answer might harm her and the one who asked. "Look," she said, gliding over the questions entirely. "We're intimate. We mess around. But it doesn't mean anything."

I scoffed. "I hardly think masturbating with my face is your idea of intimacy."

The complete and utter silence in this hut. Deafening as it was damning. "This isn't supposed to happen. You have everything against humans and against me. You're losing yourself."

"A little more each day."

"You've gone off the deep end, you know?" She was reaching in her head, grabbing at anything. "Wanting to protect me like this. And from what?"

"Everything," I said. "From everyone—yourself. You aren't a demoness, and as I've pointed out these men are plunderers. The clothing may change, even the colors. But the behavior remains the same."

"How old are you anyway?"

"Old," I said simply, then continuing. "You can't hear what they're saying about you right now. I hear them perfectly. If half weren't torn up, others needing herbs they'd…"

She gave me an exasperated look. "They'd what? I'm sure you've imagined worse."

"Oh, I have," I admitted openly. "Because I was angry. As angry as you like. If someone held you against your will would you not dream of killing them?"

Kagome, so stunned by the fairness of my statement, did not wipe the droplets that crawled down her face. She took in a deep breath, exhaled with a shiver. We might as well have been standing outside. The rain was pouring in freely. "You're insufferable, you know that?" I nodded to this with no argument. "But you're making sense."

"Now, about your bow."

"I don't know what I'm doing wrong," she said. "The moment I focus my power it just breaks."

"You need a master weaponsmith."

"What, do you know a person?"

"Demon to be precise. And you've made his acquaintance."

"Have I?" she wondered.

"Mm. Totosai is not fond of this one," I explained. "Fortunately for you he seeks new and inventive ways to spite me, and just might find my predicament amusing enough to craft you a truly magnificent weapon. A demon longbow."

"Well that's no good," she said, drying her face with the end of my fur. "You know humans can't use demon weapons. At least not for very long."

"In most cases."

"I'm trying to understand."

"Basically," I started, "if Inuyasha can borrow our father's power through Tessaiga, then why not mine for your bow? I am unable to harm you in any way. Be it physically or… spiritually."

"Why are you telling me this?" she asked. "You could have easily kept this to yourself. What do you hope to gain from this?"

"I'm telling you this," I answered with some irritation—the kit had joined us in the hut, "because I have a proposition for you."

* * *

**A/N:** The tale about dog demons at the beginning was a little too on the nose. But really it's something I read on Wikipedia under _"__Inugami."_ So credit to that source. Give it a read if you're curious. Oh and I gotta be honest. I always thought Sesshomaru having poison claws was a random feature that had nothing to do with lore. According to the Wiki referenced above, it was said that when a dog demon covets someone's food it instantly turns putrid.


End file.
